By the way, why is Snapchat called Snapchat?

Did you know that the mobile application could have been called otherwise? A legal threat ultimately proved a godsend in choosing Snapchat’s name.

A white ghost on a yellow background. An application popular with young people. You can certainly see what service it is, if you are at least interested in digital news. It is Snapchat that it is. Although the trend is today at TikTok, the app launched by three students, headed by Evan Spiegel, remains very popular.

A complaint and a name change

But before being called Snapchat, the application was almost called Picaboo – and then, mobile users would not have exchanged snaps, but pics. This is what tells a long format published in Forbes in 2014, three years after Snapchat debuted. The reason why Picaboo was not kept? Sending a formal notice from another company that already used this name for an activity in photo albums.

It turns out that, in retrospect, this legal threat has been salutary for the startup. ” It felt like the greatest bargain ever »Evan Spiegel said on this subject. The company was thus able to switch to another name, which describes well what the application does: both instant messaging (chat) and sending ephemeral photos, which disappear a bit in a snap of the fingers, instantly (snap).

This name is not unrelated to the ideas that accompanied the genesis of the project in 2011. Indeed, we noted in a subject retracing the Snapchat adventure, Picaboo was described as the means of sending daring photos, an activity become rather common – the famous sexting.

What about the ghost? This is a proposal from Reggie Brown, one of the three students behind Picaboo Snapchat. He is in a way the witness of the previous name (boo is the classic English-speaking exclamation to express fear, especially of a ghost – boo!). This ghost even has a name: Ghostface Chillah. It’s a nod to Wu-Tan Clan rapper Ghostface Killah. And yes.