Teens still love Snapchat. But its business is struggling to grow up. – The Washington Post

While Facebook, YouTube and Twitter were making headlines and testifying before Congress, Snapchat spent the past decade quietly entrenching itself as teens’ favorite social media app. Left for dead by some analysts five years ago when Facebook’s Instagram copied its signature disappearing-photo feature, Stories, Snapchat instead kept growing by coming up with a new set of playful features.Until now. An economic downturn, seismic shifts in the digital ad market and the meteoric rise of TikTok have thrown Snap for a loop, and on Aug. 31 it laid off 20 percent of its employees. An internal memo from CEO Evan Spiegel, first obtained by The Verge on Wednesday and viewed by The Post, acknowledged that the company is on track to badly miss its internal growth targets for 2022. Since January, the Los Angeles-based company’s stock has lost nearly three-fourths of its value.No longer the sprightly upstart in the social media world, Snap faces a new challenge as it enters its second decade: how to build a mature, profitable business around an app that remains beloved by teens but largely ignored by older adults with disposable income. A company known for an optimistic culture and whimsical product initiatives, which prided itself…
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