Excerpt from the referenced article by Gannes:

Heyward contended that Whisper is part of a backlash to a Facebook-era world where everybody knows your name and the NSA is probably tracking you. It has that in common with Snapchat, Bitcoin and even Edward Snowden, he asserted.

Coincidentally, both Whisper and Snapchat are Los Angeles-area startups — in fact, Heyward and Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel even went to the same high school there, but not at the same time. It turns out they have a lot in common, even if their apps seem quite different. [.....]

As Spiegel explains it, what makes Snapchat interesting is that his users are actually living their lives online, rather than existing offline and cherry-picking big moments and good angles to share online.

As opposed to Facebook or Instagram, Snapchat’s popular disappearing photo messaging service ”captures a broader use case,” Spiegel said in an interview at our conference D: Dive Into Mobile. “It’s less about ‘I’m cool, I look really good,’ and it’s a lot more about communicating where you are, what you’re doing, how you feel. It’s more about chatting and messaging than putting yourself on display.”