Stop Quiting 2014 figures... India has more than 200 Million social media users out of that Snapcat had more than 10% market share... for an app that has 160 Million users.. losing 20 million is as good as losing a country like Newzeland five times over..
This is what happens to a troll when he is confronted with facts..
This app (Snapchat) is only for rich people and I don’t want it to expand into poor countries like India and Spain”
http://www.dailyo.in/variety/snapch...ia-poor-digital-smartphone/story/1/16704.html
Snapchat CEO the co-founder of image messaging app had to face the heat. Earlier, at an expansion meeting, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel had allegedly said, “This app (Snapchat) is only for rich people and I don’t want it to expand into poor countries like India and Spain”. Soon after the comment, Snapchat CEO faced outrage on social media. After the news broke out #BoycottSnapchat started trending on twitter and people across India went ahead to uninstall the app from their smartphones. A day after, Snapchat was surrounded by the controversy, the company denied the report and release an official statement saying that “Snapchat is for everyone! It’s available worldwide to download for free.”
But the real question arises after this controversy is that; Are we Indians really poor to afford to download and use the free Snapchat app? The unrealistic answer could be NO. But the fact is that India still remains a poor country when we compare ourselves with other countries in the Global Poverty trend. Social inequality, illiteracy, population explosion, gender inequality unequal distribution of wealth faulty economic reforms, corruption and many other factors have always acted as a stumbling block and India remains in the Global Poverty Index.
Snapchat CEO saying India 'too poor' is old-school rascism
India may be used to tech czars regularly courting its 800 million and growing cellphone users, among them about 600 million happen to be smartphone users, but that doesn’t stop a privileged bigot from stepping on our digital toes.
While Indians are warming up to Snapchat’s weird flowery video messages – part fantasy, part technology-driven crazed interaction, it has come to light that the company’s young CEO, Evan Spiegel, had betrayed grave ignorance and racism with a passing comment on the country.
In a 2015 meeting, Spiegel had, while discussing the app’s user base and strategies for expansion, said that he wouldn’t be interested in India and Spain, because he thought the countries were “too poor” to afford Snapchat, which according to him is an app “for the rich”. This, despite an employee’s concern that Snapchat wasn’t doing enough to woo Indians, which has one of the largest user base of smartphones and was growing by leaps and bounds.
Racism in digital age
Evan Spiegel betrays both ignorance and bigotry with his stupid comment.
According to the magazine Variety, Spiegel said: “This app is only for the rich people. I don’t want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain.”
According to this report: “An ex-employee of Snapchat – Anthony Pompliano – who is currently engaged in a lawsuit against SNAP after he accused the company of misleading investors by providing inflated statistics about user data, said that Spiegel stormed out of the meeting after making this comment.”
Now that’s both misplaced hubris and some rotten ignorance.
At a time when Facebook honcho Mark Zuckerberg went out of his way to push “free internet” via Facebook to India’s 1.3 billion people, and Bill Gates makes it very clear that Microsoft is part of Narendra Modi’s Digital India project, how is it that Spiegel talks like a disconnected frat-boy that global tech can ill-afford to entertain.
There is a two-pronged misunderstanding in Spiegel’s unbelievably daft comment. Firstly, smartphone penetration and being a rich country by conservative estimates are not mutually exclusive. Hence, even a country that has low per capita income but a high GDP (seventh in the world), such as India, is a tech powerhouse and literally the world’s IT department.
Secondly, poverty, in the way Spiegel understands it, is obsolete. Nowadays, a smartphone isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity. In fact, internet connectivity is now a human right. Even though traditional indicators such as health, education, nutrition are not top-notch in a developing country such as India, we happen to be one of the biggest markets of smartphones worldwide, because we have a huge population of young, connected individuals – exactly the demographic that Snapchat wishes to elicit into downloading its quirky app.
No wonder Snapchat is in a soup now because Spiegel has managed to miff one of most overwrought and easy-to-outrage people in the world – us Indians, but this time justifiably so.
Snapchat has about four million users in India, and clearly is much behind say WhatsApp, which has 200 million and growing. Snapchat is way behind Twitter, Facebook and other apps that are popular among Indians, because of their appeal in marked ways to woo the volatile Indian crowd. Can Spiegel really afford to be rude to a people who alone can downgrade the app by messing with ratings or simply uninstalling it en masse?
No, actually. And that’s precisely what happened. As #BoycottSnapchat trended on Twitter, the app’s rating came crashing to one star and thousands have already uninstalled it from their phones.
Twitter reactions to this digital humiliation of Indians are noteworthy:
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Anurag Verma
✔@kitAnurag
While we Indians are only outraging online over Snapchat CEO's comments, Spain has lost it completely
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Sanket Dhongade @shanku98
#Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel calls India pooe. Teach him a lesson:-
1) Uninstall
2) Rate it 1star on Google play store
3) RT and spread it...
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હરામી ™ @HaraME_Tweets
Dear CEO of @Snapchat
Kejriwal sir spent 1 crore rupees for chai and samosa and you think that india is poor country
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Abdul Wahid Khan @iamwahid1998
Dear Snapchat CEO,
You jst triggrd the country wid 1.25 billion population! Enjoy the hatrd!
With love
We Indians.
apart being fed with Indian propaganda what else you know about e-commerce and online social media?
how long you want to use this lie of the century ? a biggest middle class should make the country the biggest consumer of modern consumption goods and luxury goods, or to make the country as one of the most influential economies or political entities or industrial hubs of the world`````but reality tells that India consumes little of modern consumption goods and neglectable of luxury goods (most contributed by your ultra rich high castes)````'biggest middle class of world' lol the biggest joke of the century``
New Recruit
GDP per capita in India is higher than Pakistan, so it's not good for a Pakistani to use it a tool to attack Indians.
India has the most poor in the world
Indians believe they can screw Snapchat and shut them out like China did to Google. Indians overrated their capabilities
