Last week, an ad that was questionable at very best found its way onto Snapchat’s platform, an ad that joked about the history of violence between Chris Brown and Rihanna. Naturally, Rihanna wasn’t too pleased with it, so she took to Instagram to respond, accusing Snapchat of making light of domestic violence and saying, “Now Snapchat, I know you already know you ain’t my fav app out there, but I’m just trying to figure out what the point was with this mess!”
The fallout from Rihanna’s response was significant for Snapchat: The company’s stock value dropped significantly, and now we know how bad the damage was: CNN notes that Snapchat’s market value took a hit of $800 million.
Snapchat has had it rough the past few weeks when it comes to celebrity relations: Before Rihanna’s damaging words, Kylie Jenner tweeted back in February, “Sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad.” After that tweet, Snapchat’s market value dropped by $1.3 billion, meaning that together, Rihanna and Jenner have cost Snapchat about $2.1 billion.
This is just the sort of hit that Snapchat doesn’t need right now, since users are pretty frustrated with the app’s new interface, which is causing a surge in popularity for Instagram’s similar Stories feature.
