Snapchat is a photo messaging app developed by Evan Spiegel and Robert Murphy, then Stanford University students. Users can take photos, record videos, add text and drawings, and send them to a controlled list of recipients. These sent photographs and videos are known as "Snaps".
The project was started for one of Spiegel's classes at Stanford University, where Spiegel was a product design major. Beginning under the name Picaboo, the two later brought Bobby Murphy into the project to code the application. Snapchat was first launched in July 2011 under the name Picaboo in Spiegel's father's living room. The app was later renamed and relaunched under the name Snapchat.
The app's mascot is called "Ghostface Chillah", a name Brown derived from Ghostface Killah of the hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan.