Last week someone casually asked me what I thought the next Snapchat would be. As there is a lot of volatility among social apps (note the current migration from Twitter to Snapchat in the +30 age group), the real answer is that the next Snapchat will probably look nothing like Snapchat, just like Snapchat looked nothing like Facebook.  

If I had to guess, I would guess that the next Snapchat will actually look something Bitmoji, the ‘make your own avatar’ product launched last year by Bitstrips. Bitstrips, a custom comic strip startup, was founded in 2007, while Evan Spiegel was still in high school.

Lighthearted and quirky, the relatively simple Bitmoji avatars are taking over the world: There has been a proliferation of Bitmojis in my messaging apps and texts this quarter, especially around holidays and birthdays, which have up until now been Facebook’s bread and butter.  

I have little insight into Bitmoji’s actual traction – SensorTower estimates it at 750k downloads in March 2016, which seems low to me. But I have watched its usage increase in frequency among my peers in the first three months of the year, as it climbs the ranks of the iOS app store. As a Bitmoji would say, it’s “trending up!”

The Bitmoji product itself, much like Snapchat’s ridiculous filters, is delightful – on any given day, you can be a character from Zoolander or the singer Sia or a human burrito who hates Mondays. You can dress your Bitmoji in DVF. You can use it ironically with friends, all of you in on the joke (that cartoon of you holding a bleeding heart is so creepy!). Or you can drill deep with verisimilitude and meaning in your messages – one of my friends, who happens to be a fighter pilot, uses a ‘Happy Birthday!’ Bitmoji with a plane skywriting the ‘Happy Birthday’ part. 

Bitmoji plays so well into one of the key user stickiness factors of social apps: Vanity. We keep marveling when our Bitmojis look like us and our friends – even though that’s what they’re supposed to do exactly. 

Products that galvanize communication and social interaction through humor and playfulness will continue to spread, by definition, no matter how rudimentary they are. 

I can only imagine what Bitmoji’s independent trajectory as a fleshed-out (pun intended) platform would look like, had it not been acquired by Snapchat in March – AR? VR? I’d settle for the ability to include multiple people in avatars, a solid viral hook. We’ll never know. 

Which brings us to another 🔑 lesson: If you’re looking for the next Snapchat, so is Snapchat. 

Top image via: Pla Siriviriyakul