The closing date of Zenly was announced month ago, even though the plans for it were announced much more earlier. Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel, in his letter on August 31 has provided Restructuring and Refocusing Plans for 2023, which included termination and decline in investment for the projects that are don’t contribute to strategic priorities of the company. One of these projects is Zenly. Even though Zenly is very popular app with monthly amount of active users more than 35M, it seems like developers have not figured out how to make it profitable. So, the closing date was set to 3rd of February, all users receiver the following announcement (Illustration 1.) and the timer in the app started.
To start with, what is Zenly? Zenly was founded in 2012 by Antoine Martin and Simon Pollet, two French entrepreneurs. They launched the app in 2013, and it quickly gained popularity in Europe. In 2017, Zenly was acquired by Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, for an undisclosed amount. After the acquisition, Zenly app continued to operate as an independent app, but with the support of Snap. Zenly is a mobile application that allows users to share their location with friends and family in real-time. Users can see the location of their friends and family on a map, and they can also use the app to message each other, share photos, stickers, videos and more. You are able to create and highlight places on the map, both custom and common, check favourite places of your friends, see countries where you been and pleases where you spent time and so on (Illustration 3). The app is available on both iOS and Android platforms.
So, what are the reasons for the shutdown? Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel: From the mentioned letter of We have worked thoughtfully and deliberately to find the right balance between focusing our investments while continuing to innovate, and we have made the decision to discontinue our investments in Snap Originals, Minis, Games, and Pixy, among other areas. We have also started the process of winding down the standalone applications Zenly and Voisey. So Zenly along with other projects and applications became a victim of the financial crisis in the Snap inc. So, that does crisis management mean? Closing projects that does not bring money. And unfortunately, Zenly is one of these projects.
Also, there is one more important factor that affected the shutdown. Snap inc. one of the main products is SnapChat (Illustration 4.).
SnapChat is a multimedia messaging app that allows users to send photos, videos, and text messages that disappear after a short period of time. Users can also use the app to add filters and effects to their photos and videos, and to communicate with friends through live video chats. Snapchat also has a feature called “Stories,” which allows users to create a chronological collection of photos and videos that are visible to their friends for 24 hours. And one of the options is SnapMap (Illustration 5.). Even though the functionality of it is far less than Zenly, seems like Snap inc. managers believe that after Zenly shutdown most of the community will go to the SnapMap.
In conclusion, it is a pity that because on the financial crisis and unprofitability Zenly is closing. Also, from my point of view, SnapMap will not acquire many new users, because the difference between the functionality of Zenly and SnapMap is too high, and users would rather prefer other alternatives like iShare and so on. However, it should be noted that after the shutdown the huge amount of users searching for the alternatives will appear on the market, and developers will have a chance to attract new audience for their projects.
The list of used sources:
- https://zen.ly/terms
- https://newsroom.snap.com/ru-RU/restructuring-and-refocusing-our-business
- https://map.snapchat.com/
- https://isharingsoft.com
- https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/18/social-maps-app-zenly-rolls-out-its-own-maps/
- https://community.zen.ly/hc/en-us/articles/11085576435857-why-is-zenly-shutting-down-
- https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/05/zenly-was-the-best-social-app-and-it-will-sadly-shut-down-on-february-3rd/
- https://isharingsoft.com/zenly-shutdown-and-whats-next/
I was very upset when I found out that Zenly would stop working in February. For almost 2 years my friends and I have been using this app. It became our lifestyle, it created a certain community for us. Zenly’s main aim is not to allow users to check each other’s location, but also to unite in communities. With the help of this app, people can join their friends naturally by knowing they are nearby.
I would like to add that there is a common preconception that location-sharing apps kill your phone battery. But in fact, Zenly’s developers spent 2 years working to minimize this issue. They came up with a technology that asks for your location only when one of your friends needs it, which saves a lot of battery life.
Overall, I hope that we will find a decent alternative to Zenly.