THE PARENT COMPANY of social media platform Snapchat had $1.3 billion (€1 billion) wiped off its value yesterday, just after Kylie Jenner tweeted that she was no longer using its app.
The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star had tweeted: “sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad.”
The popular app has recently undergone a redesign, drawing the ire of many of its users. A petition to change it back to its previous edition has got well over one million signatures.
The shares at Snapchat plummeted after Jenner tweeted this message to her 24.5 million Twitter followers.
Dropping initially almost 8%, shares recovered to just a 6% drop on Wall Street wiping out over a billion dollars in its value.
Jenner has huge followings on various social media platforms, including Twitter and Instagram. Snapchat faces huge competition from Instagram in terms of celebrity following.
She later followed up with a tweet saying “still love you tho snap… my first love”.
This drop in value came alongside the news that Snapchat’s co-founder and chief executive officer Evan Spiegel earned $638 million (€518 million) last year, the vast majority of this through stocks in the company, Bloomberg reported.
Earlier this month, commenting on the backlash to changes with the Snapchat app, the company said that “updates as big as this one can take a little getting used to, but we hope the community will enjoy it once they settle in”.
With reporting from AFP
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