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Finally!
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel addressed on Wednesday what many have been hoping he would address for months: What he thinks about Facebook and the fact the social giant is copying all of Snapchat’s best features.
On Snap’s Q1 earnings call Wednesday, Spiegel was asked bluntly: “Does Facebook scare you? Why or why not?”
Spiegel laughed. Then talked about how important it is to be creative. Then said this:
“At the end of the day, just because Yahoo, for example, has a search box, it doesn’t mean they’re Google.”
Niiiiiice. Worth the wait!
Whether or not Spiegel should be concerned about Facebook is another question. Ever since Facebook started copying Snapchat’s Stories feature into all of its apps, Snap’s growth has slowed. Snap chalked up the slowdown to a technical issue with Android users in Q4, which it says it fixed in Q1, though it added just eight million new daily users this past quarter after adding 15 million DAUs one year ago.
Here is Spiegel’s longer response to the Facebook question, in which he talks about the importance of creativity.
“If you want to be a creative company, you gotta get comfortable with, and basically enjoy the fact that people are going to copy your products if you make great stuff. We’ve seen this happen a lot in technology. When Google came along, everyone really felt like they needed a search strategy. When Facebook came along everyone felt they needed a social strategy. And now with Snap, with our company, we believe that everyone is going to develop a camera strategy because I think we really help people understand how valuable the camera is. It’s really the center of everything that we do. At the end of the day, just because Yahoo, for example, has a search box, it doesn’t mean they’re Google.”
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
