Asian selfie app Snow, formerly a Snapchat clone, has removed its user-to-user communication features and raised $50M from SoftBank and Sequoia China
if it was not everyone will be trying to copy it. It is just not well executed as a “publicly traded” company. Here is another clone getting another slug of cash. http://techcrunch.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Snow began in 2016 as a near-verbatim Snapchat copy — self-destructing messages and stories — that found traction in China precisely because Snapchat was blocked there, then took $45M from Line for a 25% stake and drew an acquisition approach from Facebook. The new $50M round from SoftBank and Sequoia China extends that pattern of Asian capital backing a regional Snapchat analog.
The pivot is what makes this round notable: by stripping out user-to-user communication, Snow is conceding the messaging war it was built to fight and keeping only the camera side of the product.
First-order effects
- Snow exits head-to-head competition with Snapchat on messaging and stories, narrowing itself to camera features while adding SoftBank and Sequoia China to a cap table that already includes Naver/Line's 25%.
- Snapchat loses its most prominent Asian clone as a direct rival, though the blocked-in-China dynamic means the two barely overlapped in Snow's strongest market anyway.
Second-order effects
- Snap's answer to the clone wave arrives months later with Snap Kit, which lets developers embed Snap's camera features instead of rebuilding them — converting would-be copies into distribution.
- Investors who backed the clone thesis (Line, now SoftBank and Sequoia China) are effectively funding a pivot, signaling that regional feature-copies alone no longer justify rounds without a differentiated wedge.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the 2016-era clone economy gives way to a platform-licensing model in which the original camera company monetizes the features clones once copied for free.
- Asian social apps increasingly diverge from their Western templates under local investors, with China's block of Snapchat having seeded a parallel app ecosystem rather than a mirror of it.
The trend: Regional Snapchat clones are being repositioned by Asian investors from feature copies into standalone camera products, just as Snap itself shifts from app to platform.