Snap CEO Evan Spiegel Talks Snapchat’s ‘Super App’ Aspirations

Snap co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel said that Elon Musk’s plan to build Twitter into a “super app” mirrors his own social media company’s ambitions.

Super apps, which integrate multiple services into one platform, allow companies like Santa Monica-based Snap to diversify user engagement, Spiegel told Axios Monday at the Cannes Lions advertising festival in France.

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“[W]hen you’ve diversified engagement across a wide variety of products in the same application, that can really strengthen your business,” Spiegel told Axios.

With his tumultuous, $44 billion Twitter takeover in the works, Musk told Twitter employees last week that he wants the social media platform to reach the popularity of Chinese super app WeChat. Tencent-owned WeChat integrates digital payments and other ecommerce features into its messaging and social media capabilities.

“When he talks about Twitter as a super app, I think that’s an idea that’s really compelling,” Spiegel said of Musk’s plans for the company. “I think he’s seeing a lot of what we saw in Asia, for example, and a lot of what we’ve tried to build.”

While Snap has not previously expressed interest in the super app model, Spiegel noted that the company has invested in bolstering its service beyond media-sharing and messaging in recent years—with Snapchat now incorporating concert recommendations, augmented reality and original content. (Disclosure: Snap is an investor in dot.LA.)

“[I]f you look at the evolution of Snapchat, [it’s something] we’ve been investing a lot in, over the years," he said.

Musk’s acquisition of Twitter still needs to overcome his concerns over spam accounts on the platform, while the debt portion of the deal still needs to “come together,” the Tesla CEO said Tuesday. Another of the billionaire’s companies, Hawthorne-based aerospace firm SpaceX, fired several employees last week for writing and circulating an open letter criticizing Musk’s conduct.