With a few clicks on her phone, Kylie Jenner was able to cause Snapchat’s parent company Snap Inc. to lose $1.3 billion (a 7.2% drop) at the stock market on Thursday when she said she was no long a fan of the app after its recent update.
sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad.
— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) February 21, 2018
“sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad,” Jenner wrote.
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With 24.5 million followers, Jenner had been seen as the unofficial spokesperson for the app prior to her secrecy involving her pregnancy with Stormi Jenner. She tried to say she was still a fan of the app 20 minutes later, but by then the damage was done.
still love you tho snap … my first love
— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) February 21, 2018
“Still love you tho (sic) snap … my first love,” Jenner wrote.
And while the consequences of her tweet were damaging to Snapchat, they may have had another unintentional consequence for a separate company.
TMZ noted that in the days since Jenner made the original tweet, Snapchat’s market value has gone from $22.78 billion to $21.41 billion. Meanwhile, Facebook‘s market value has shot way up from $516.83 billion to $532.86 billion in the same amount of time. Given that Facebook owns Snapchat’s main competitor in Instagram, it’s possible that Jenner helped swing fans from one photo-sharing app to the other.
Snapchat’s most recent update combines the Discovery and Friends sections of the app into one page, meaning that in order for a user to see all of their friends stories they’ll need to navigate through pop-ups of stories and other popular Snapchat accounts first. This led to a heavy wave of backlash from users on other social media platforms, which Jenner was apart of.
“Mm just saw the new Snapchat. I don’t know how i feel about it! What do you guys think?” Jenner asked her fans.
More bad news came Snapchat’s way when Maybelline, one of the most popular cosmetic companies in the world, polled its followers on Twitter if it should stay on Snapchat or focus more on Instagram. The poll was over 80% in favor of leaving Snapchat before the company took down the tweet.
