Snapchat beat Mailbox, Tinder, VSCO Cam and even WhatsApp to be named the "Best Mobile Application" at the 2013 Crunchies Awards.
The Crunchies are an industry award started in 2008 by several technology blogs for Silicon Valley companies and venture capitalists. The awards are co-hosted by blogs such as GigaOm, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, and ReadWriteWeb, which no longer participates, and tabulated from votes on their sites.
This year, Snapchat was named the "Best Mobile Application" of 2013, rising above apps like Mailbox, Tinder, VSCO Cam and WhatsApp. This is the second Crunchies award picked up by the photo messaging application. Last year, it was crowned the fastest rising startup.
Co-founder Evan Spiegel accepted the award on behalf of the company from TechCrunch writer Greg Kumparak, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Yahoo SVP of Mobile and Emerging Products Adam Cahan, according to a TechCrunch report.
Snapchat was started in 2011 in Stanford and soon spread its wings across the globe. Statistics reveal that more than 400 million messages per day are sent through this application compared to Whatsapp's over 50 billion messages processed every day. Snapchat has a long way to go to compete with the popular green instant messenger.
The road to success hasn't been easy since and even now, problems seem to surround the service. Recently, Jaime Sanchez, a cyber-security consultant for a major telecommunications company Telefonica situated in Spain discovered a glitch with the application that allows thousands of images to be sent in seconds. This makes it convenient for hackers to launch a denial-of-service attack that can temporarily freeze a person's iPhone, according to LA Times.
Despite all this, it seems the startup is doing pretty well for itself. Its growing success caught the attention of many tech giants. In fact, in December 2012, Facebook reportedly made a $3 billion offer to acquire the company but was turned down by Spiegel.
"There are very few people in the world who get to build a business like this," Spiegel recently told Forbes explaining his refusal to sell the company. "I think trading that for some short-term gain isn't very interesting."
First awarded the fastest rising startup and now the best app of the year, the service is definitely doing something right to engage as many users in its photo service and is the right way to go.
