The People With Power at Snap

Snap is on the mend. After a year of turmoil, when most of the top management team departed and the stock plunged to as low as $5, things have stabilized. The revolving door of executive departures has halted, at least for the moment. A new senior team, with more women than in the past, is in place, drawn from companies as varied as Amazon, Huffington Post and McDonald’s. And the stock has rocketed back to around $14.

As one current employee mused recently, internally it feels like the heady days of 2016, when its user base was growing quickly and before Snap went public. The sense of optimism has been buoyed by some product successes in recent months, including Snapchat’s gender-swapping lens, which animates people’s faces to make them appear a different gender. (One estimate from Sensor Tower says the viral success of the feature more than doubled downloads of Snapchat.) Other products like Snap Kit, which lets people use their Snapchat ID to log into other apps, and a gaming initiative, have shown early promise.