Kylie Jenner’s recent hiatus from social media until she announced that she’d welcomed her baby girl had some wondering: Has she lost any social media clout during her absence?
The answer is no.
With one tweet, Kylie Jenner may have just delivered the killing blow to Snapchat. And it’s already cost them $ 1.3 billion.
Kylie Jenner spent months without pumping out new content on social media.
Part of that was because her body was busy constructing a tiny life form. That takes a lot of time and it also takes a lot out of you.
(We do think that precious baby Stormi Webster was worth it, and we imagine that Kylie agrees)
But mostly, she chose to spend her pregnancy in seclusion because she didn’t want to stress about social media — not about her output or over how others might reply to her.
That is totally her choice. She’s since apologized to fans for not sharing that part of her life with them, and made up for it by sharing a baby video of her pregnancy and the birth of her daughter.
Also, she’s back on social media.
So, did Kylie’s influence ebb while she was playing the role of a build-a-baby workshop?
It did not.
But it seems that her love of Snapchat, of which she was once more or less considered the reigning queen, sure has waned.
On Wednesday, the makeup mogul tweeted an innocuous question that’s been asked by countless others for the past few weeks.
We wonder if, at the time, she knew the devastating effect that it would wreak.
“Sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad.”
Not only has Instagram introduced its own Stories feature, complete with more options than Snapchat offers, but Snapchat’s most recent update has infuriated long-time users and caused them to put down the app.
Clearly, Kylie is among them.
She followed that by tweeting:
“Still love you tho snap … my first love.”
That profession of love, however, did not save the app’s stock.
On Thursday, the market value of Snapchat dropped by 7.2 percent.
That’s by 1.3 billion dollars.
Though there were other factors — such as a recent influx of strongly negative reviews from users after the app’s recent update.
Market analysts have Twitter too, folks. They could see Kylie’s tweet and they could see the sentiment mirrored in replies by her 24.5 million followers.
Outrage over an update is nothing new — countless apps and video games see backlash from furious users after “helpful” updates alter or destroy their ability to continue to use the things that they love.
But when the Queen of Snapchat herself doesn’t find the app usable anymore? That’s beyond a warning sign.
It’s no wonder that investors decided to jump ship.
No one could be happier at this news than Mark Zuckerberg.
It wasn’t all that long ago that the Facebook founder and billionaire offered to buy Snapchat for a cool $ 2 billion.
Snapchat declined. Internet denizens note that Instagram then came out with a Stories feature that many users find preferable to Snapchat’s, effectively making Snapchat (in some people’s opinions) redundant unless you’re just sending nudes.
That may still have played a role in Snapchat’s apparent downfall, but Zuckerberg surely couldn’t have predicted that Kylie would so mournfully tank Snapchat’s brand with a single tweet.
The question is: did Kylie have any idea that she might be effectively euthanizing Snapchat?
And did Snapchat realize how much their brand hinged upon one barely-20-year-old?
