Despite Snap's well-known rivalry with Facebook, CEO Evan Spiegel did not give a resounding "yes" when asked on Friday at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference if breaking up Facebook would benefit society.
The big picture: "The concern is around anti-competitive practices," such as Facebook-owned Instagram suppressing links to Snapchat accounts, he said. As for an anti-trust investigation, "These investigations last 7 to 10 years... and basically nothing happens," said Spiegel, though he added he's not a regulator.
Spiegel also tried to distance his company's app from Chinese video app TikTok, whose popularity has recently exploded, by describing it as "premium user generated content" — created by users, but with more polished editing.
- Meanwhile, Snapchat is focused on users creating and sharing content with their friends, which is why consumers find it compelling, he said. On the other hand, Snapchat has invested in high-quality content like shows from publishers.
- "I think at a high level, we don't need to compete [in the middle] to be successful," Spiegel said, adding it is something the company would consider in the future.
Addressing his recent "don't go public" advice to companies: "I think the process of going public is actually an incredibly important process for a business," Spiegel said.
"[But]it can be challenging to grow a business with capital that is not very expensive and transition to a public market that has a very different set of metrics, frankly."
- He later clarified to the interviewer, Josh Constine of TechCrunch, that he "was trying to make a joke” when he told entrepreneurs not to go public.
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