It took just an 88-character tweet by a social media influencer, to send a global tech industry giant scrambling.
Mere hours after American entrepreneur and socialite Kylie Jenner tweeted, in February this year, that she rarely used the Snapchat app anymore, stocks in the company dropped by almost eight per cent.
There were other factors at play in the social network’s stock slide — like users being unhappy with the new redesign, and Instagram’s introduction of Instagram Stories, which now boasts more users than Snapchat’s entire user base. But the instantaneous impact of the social media influencer could not be ignored. Jenner, who reportedly holds Snapchat’s most viewed account, wrote off the app — and it visibly moved markets and affected public perception of the app.
Just a month after this incident, Rihanna came out with a scathing criticism of Snapchat, after the platform displayed an offensive ad featuring the artiste. The ad was for a smartphone game called ‘Would You Rather’, and it asked users if they would rather slap Rihanna or punch Chris Brown. It didn’t go unnoticed that the poll seemed to make light of the domestic violence incident between the couple in February 2009.
Rihanna’s Instagram Stories post wiped almost $1 billion (Dh3.67 billion) off the value of the app’s parent company, Snap Inc. Not even Snapchat’s apology could help tide the flood of criticism by social media users on Instagram and Twitter. Snap’s share price fell 4.02 per cent in the aftermath.
But it doesn’t stop there. Even as influencers impact businesses, they also impact other influencers.
Following Rihanna’s post, another celebrity decided to publicly snub the platform — American model and cookbook author Chrissy Teigen. In a tweet on March 24, she wrote: “I stopped using Snap. The update, the constant complaints of people not being able to find me, plus the Rihanna poll ... no bueno.”
Her tweet went out to her 10 million plus followers. But as history has shown, Snapchat might feel its impact not online, but at the stock market.
