This means sending real facial expressions rather than emoticons. The goal was to create a communication platform that was more closely related to the way people communicate in real life. In 2011, Bobby Murphy, Evan Spiegel, and Reggie Brown came up with the idea for a new social media app.

Explore the history of this popular social media sensation today, from its founding years through the IPO stage and its current usage. In 2011, a few Stanford University students came up with an idea that would become one of the most popular social media apps.

The original feature of Snapchat is the ability to send snaps.

Bobby Murphy, Evan Spiegel, and Reggie Brown came up with the idea for a new social media app.

The company gave the feature more prominent placement in a redesign last year, and plans to add Map Layers, a feature that allows third-parties like Ticketmaster to incorporate events and other content directly into the map.

Though the Snap Map has been around for years the company has been working to make it more useful - and more visible - within the app. The “popular” section of the map will surface a list of personalized suggestions based on places you’ve been and what’s popular in your area.

Interestingly, Snap is also using the new feature to generate recommendations. Places you’ve tagged are automatically saved in your “visited” tab, but you can also manually add establishments to your “favorites” list. The idea is similar to Foursquare (the original check-in based iteration), except “checking in” in this case consists of tagging a specific location in a Snap. An update rolling out today adds a new “Places” section to the map, with educated sections for recommendations, locations you’ve visited and “favorites” to remember. Snapchat is updating its in-app map to help users keep track of places they’ve visited, and where they may want to go next.

Snapchat history log