Picaboo, the early Snapchat app, first launched on iOS. Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown developed the disappearing-photo concept while at Stanford, and the first version appeared in July 2011 under the name Picaboo.
The initial iOS release helped the founders test the basic idea on Apple’s mobile platform before the product was relaunched as Snapchat in September 2011. The app’s early appeal came from its deliberately temporary photo messages, a contrast with social networks that encouraged users to build permanent public profiles and archives.
Android support arrived later, on October 29, 2012. That date is why Android is sometimes mistakenly selected for the original launch, but Android was Snapchat’s expansion platform rather than Picaboo’s first operating system. BlackBerry OS and Windows Phone were not the platform associated with Picaboo’s debut.
The early launch also predates several features now associated with Snapchat. Stories, video sharing, lenses, Discover, and augmented-reality tools were introduced later as the service grew beyond its original disappearing-photo experiment.