Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel’s savage LinkedIn update trolls Meta’s copy-paste strategy

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has added “VP Product @ Meta” to his LinkedIn profile, taking a dig at the social media network’s habit of copying features from Snapchat

Published on: Feb 7, 2025, 15:24:15 IST

By Sanya Jain

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Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has added “VP Product @ Meta” to his LinkedIn profile, taking a dig at the Mark Zuckerberg-owned social media network’s habit of copying features from his Snapchat app. The “About” section of Spiegel’s LinkedIn page now reads: “Loving husband, father of four boys, VP Product @ Meta.”

Snap Co-Founder and CEO Evan Spiegel took a dig at Meta for copying Snapchat features. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision for Clio Awards/AP Content Services) (Invision for Clio Awards/AP Content Services)

Evan Spiegel is the co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc, the instant messaging app that turned him into a billionaire at age 25. Spiegel dropped out of Stanford to focus on Snapchat in 2011.

His dig at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta comes a few years too late - between 2016 and 2017, Meta-owned apps like Instagram and Facebook implemented a number of changes that replicated popular Snapchat features.

Meta's copy-paste

In August 2016, for example, Meta launched Instagram Stories, allowing users to post photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours, a concept directly mirroring Snapchat's Stories. The Stories feature was eventually rolled out to Facebook and WhatsApp as well.

A couple of months later, Facebook Messenger unveiled a new camera interface which looks almost identical to Snapchat’s camera screen, reported CNBC.

Then, in 2017, Meta introduced "Direct," a feature enabling users to send photos and videos directly to friends, which disappear after being viewed, similar to Snapchat's direct messaging functionality.

Given their history, Spiegel’s dig at Meta prompted much amusement on social media.

On X, users praised him for blasting copycats.

Born in 1990 in Los Angeles, Spiegel studied product design at Stanford University, where he and his co-founders developed Snapchat as a way for users to share fleeting moments. Under his leadership, Snap has pioneered several social media trends, including Stories and AR filters, many of which were later adopted by competitors like Meta.

(Also read: Snapchat parent Snap announces fresh layoffs, set to cut its global workforce by 10%)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sanya Jain
Sanya Jain is an Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times Digital. She has nearly a decade of experience in covering offbeat stories that speak to the everyday experience - from viral videos to human interest copies that spark conversation. Her interests stretch across business, pop culture, social media trends, entertainment and global affairs. Before joining Hindustan Times, Sanya spent two years with Moneycontrol and five years with NDTV. She holds an undergraduate degree in English literature from St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and a master’s in journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai. Sanya has a sharp eye for spotting emerging trends and looking for newsworthy angles to elevate viral posts into meaningful narratives. She was the first one, for example, to cover Narayana Murthy’s remark on 70-hour work weeks that sparked a national conversation. She is equally at ease writing about business leaders as about the common man, about issues of national importance and memes that amuse social media. Sanya enjoys speaking with content creators, newsmakers and entrepreneurs to transform everyday moments into engaging, slice-of-life stories that resonate with readers. When she is not working, Sanya can be found curled up with a good book. Born and raised in Lucknow, she has spent the last several years in Delhi. She is deeply interested in animal welfare and now spends a lot of her time running after her destructive orange cat.Read More

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