Evan Spiegel, who has pushed the concept of ephemeral communication as Snapchat’s CEO, said he was “devastated” by the publication of his archived emails that were included in the most recent round of the Sony hack. “I felt like I was going to cry all morning, so I went on a walk and thought through a couple things,” he wrote in a memo that was sent to Snapchat employees Wednesday. “I even ran into one of my high school design teachers. She gave me a huge hug. I really needed it.”
One of the least expected companies to take collateral damage in the epic Sony Pictures hack has been Snapchat. CEO Evan Spiegel regularly trades emails with Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton, who sits on Snapchat’s board, and the revelations from the pair’s emails have been spilling out all week. Among them: the company secretly bought a company that makes a Google Glass-like product; it’s actively pursuing plans to insert music into the app; and the company turned down a bigger offer from Facebook than the $3 billion originally reported. But there are other revelations in there, too: that Chinese internet company Tencent felt insulted by him during fundraising negotiations, for example, and that he and his co-founder sought to take $40 million for themselves during a fundraising round.
