Snap Inc. buys student calendar app Saturn

It was announced this week that the company behind the Snapchat app has bought an app that is widely used as a school calendar in the USA. The Saturn app and its entire team have been acquired by Snap. The company has thus secured another app that, like Snapchat, is widely used by adolescents.

As the portal Engadget reports, Snap is taking over all 30 employees who have been involved in Saturn's operations to date. Snap's plans for Saturn are not yet entirely clear, but according to Engadget, the app will continue to run independently. It could also mean that Snap wants to use Saturn's expertise to bring calendar features to Snapchat.

Similar age groups

If you look at the user groups of both apps, the Saturn purchase by Snap is obvious. Both apps are primarily used by children and young people. While Snapchat is used by more than half of all US teenagers, Saturn is available at more than 17,000 high schools in North America. Snap now has an app in its portfolio with a user group it is very familiar with. In addition to Snapchat and now Saturn, Snap Inc. also operates Spectacle, which allows smart glasses to be integrated into Snapchat, and Bitmoji. The latter app can be used to generate avatars for Snapchat, among other things.

Saturn is described as a calendar app with social elements that allows students to compare their timetables with others, for example. It also offers functions for planning school activities outside of the normal teaching schedule, as is widely used in the USA.

Pain point: monetization

The start-up Saturn, founded around five years ago by Dylan Diamond and Max Baron, has previously received money from a number of well-known investors. These include Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, and Jeff Bezos' Bezos Expeditions. Forbes reported in 2021 that the startup had raised 44 million dollars in capital.

Saturn and Snapchat seem to have something else in common: Both are not doing so easily when it comes to monetization. While it is still unclear how Saturn will finance the app apart from investor money, Snap Inc. lives primarily from in-app advertising. At the end of last year, the listed company once again recorded millions of new Snap users and rising sales figures, but still posted another massive net loss: a good 698 million US dollars.

(nen)