The acquisition of Saturn by Snap is a strategic move which aims to ensure the company gets closer to high school and college students, who are the core community of Snapchat users. Saturn is one of the social calendar apps that change the manner students arrange their lives, allowing them to share time schedules of appointments to classes, practices, meetings, and events in real-time. This is not merely pinning a date on the calendar, this is a platform designed as a social, interactive tool that adapts to the lifestyle patterns of social networks.
In hiring the close to 30-employee team of Saturn, Snap is not only purchasing technology, but also precious knowledge on how to create tools that students identify with. The extent of Saturn is massive, where 80 percent of high schools in the United States subscribe to the service. This will provide Snap with an immediate connection to millions of adolescents who already use the platform to organize their active social life. This action not only asserts the primacy of Snap in the youth market but also puts it in a position to stay competitive against its competitors, such as Instagram and TikTok, which are also struggling to attract Gen Z attention.
As the company looks forward, it has planned to maintain Saturn as a separate app but is integrating its calendaring capabilities further into Snapchat in new and innovative ways. This may indicate that friends would have more options to view each other’s schedule, arrange a last minute get-together or plan visits, all under the umbrella of Snapchat. The addition might also improve the advertising and subscription services of Snap, supplying more detailed information about the interests of users and their activity schedule.
Finally, this acquisition is an indication of Snap to transform digital relationships into a real engagement. Combining the powerful scheduling of Saturn with the social aspect of Snapchat, Snap believes that the future of scheduling and planning your life will be as social as sharing a story or sending a snap. This may serve as a new standard of how young people have to spend their time, and converge with one another with Snap being the main platform of their social life.
