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ERROR: type should be string, got "https://www.barrons.com/articles/snapchat-wants-you-to-call-it-a-camera-company-1487371175\nSnapchat Wants You to Call It a Camera Company\nAvi Salzman\nSnapchat is getting ready to sell shares to the public and it’s trying to explain to investors why it should be considered a camera company.\nMost analysts see Snapchat as the third big social media company after Twitter and Facebook. That’s no surprise. Like those companies, Snapchat helps people connect using video, images, and text and then sells ads against the content.\nMore from Barron’s Next\nSnap’s Disappearing Act Faces New Test With Investors\nWhy a T-Mobile Merger With Sprint Looks Less Likely Today\nEtsy’s New ‘Studio’ Could Pay Off\nWhen to Buy Airline Tickets to Get The Cheapest Fare\nBut the company’s leaders are portraying it as something else too. Snap Inc. the parent company of Snapchat, calls itself a “camera company” in federal regulatory filings that it filed in advance of selling its stock to the public.\nThat doesn’t mean it thinks of itself as a competitor to Nikon, or even struggling GoPro. Instead Snapchat wants investors to realize that its business takes advantage of the central role of the camera on your smartphone, more so than any other social media company.\n“In the way that the flashing cursor became the starting point for most products on desktop computers, we believe that the camera screen will be the starting point for most products on smartphones,” the company said in its filing, known as an S-1.\nThe Snapchat app opens directly into a camera screen, allowing users to casually film their lives, unlike the more curated feeds in Facebook and Instagram. Snapchat users take more than 2.5 billion snaps a day.\nThis has financial implications. If Snapchat can truly become the most popular camera app, it might be able to tap into a larger ad budget, notes Eric Kim, a managing partner at venture capital firm Goodwater Capital (which doesn’t have a stake in Snap). While digital media (dominated by Google and Facebook) accounts for about 28% of global ad spending, TV accounts for 41%, according to estimates from media agency Carat. If Snapchat can tap into that TV spending, its potential ad revenue should increase, Kim notes. “Video could really take off,” he said.\nBig Picture: Snapchat calls itself a camera company and thinks it can harness the power of the smartphone camera to increase engagement and revenue.\nMost analysts see Snapchat as the third big social media company after Twitter and Facebook."