Skip to main content

Snapchat hopes to stop copycats by acquiring the Strong.Codes team

Snapchat
dennizn/123RF
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but when you’re the cat who keeps getting copied, all that flattery may be a bit much. That certainly appears to be Snapchat’s mentality, as parent company Snap recently acquired the team that created Strong.Codes, a firm known for obscuring software code, thereby making it more difficult to rip off. At the beginning of the year, Snap hired Laurnet Balmelli, one of the engineers who co-founded Strong.Codes. And in the months since, the rest of the four-person team has jumped ship to Snap. While not all of the quartet will move to California (the latest hires are staying in Switzerland), Strong.Codes has shuttered.

According to Bloomberg, this is by no means the only moves Snap is making to ensure that Snapchat plays its cards as close to the chest as possible. After all, a number of other social media platforms have released eerily similar features to the ephemeral photo app in recent months, sometimes even beating Snapchat at its own game. But now, it looks as though Snap is trying to turn things around, and as Bloomberg reports, is now advertising across Switzerland in hopes of hiring information-security experts and cryptographers in the European nation.

Snap also appears to be ramping up its European presence as a whole, as the company is serving as one of the leading sponsors of cybersecurity conference Black Alps 17, which is being held near Geneva, Switzerland. A couple months ago, Snap hired an ex-Facebook employee to head up operations in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland as well.

While Snapchat remains a popular app, founder and CEO Evan Spiegel and his investors may have cause for concern. After a much-hyped IPO, the company hasn’t been performing all that well financially. On Tuesday, July 18, shares hit an all-time low of $14.65, and it is reported that the declining stock price has dropped the net worth of Spiegel and co-founder Bobby Murphy a staggering $4.3 billion.

So look out, developers. Snap could soon be guarding its code base with an iron wall, courtesy of the folks behind Strong.Code.

Editors' Recommendations

Lulu Chang
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…
How to set your Facebook Feed to show most recent posts
A smartphone with the Facebook app icon on it all on a white marble background.

Facebook's Feed is designed to recommend content you'd most likely want to see, and it's based on your Facebook activity, your connections, and the level of engagement a given post receives.

But sometimes you just want to see the latest Facebook posts. If that's you, it's important to know that you're not just stuck with Facebook's Feed algorithm. Sorting your Facebook Feed to show the most recent posts is a simple process:

Read more
How to go live on TikTok (and can you with under 1,000 followers?)
Tik Tok

It only takes a few steps to go live on TikTok and broadcast yourself to the world:

Touch the + button at the bottom of the screen.
Press the Live option under the record button.
Come up with a title for your live stream. 
Click Go Live to begin.

Read more
Bluesky barrels toward 1 million new sign-ups in a day
Bluesky social media app logo.

Social media app Bluesky has picked nearly a million new users just a day after exiting its invitation-only beta and opening to everyone.

In a post on its main rival -- X (formerly Twitter) -- Bluesky shared a chart showing a sudden boost in usage on the app, which can now be downloaded for free for iPhone and Android devices.

Read more