Sony hack reveals Snapchat’s secrets: Felt like crying all morning, says CEO Spiegel

The hacking of Sony’s corporate network has resulted in some serious damage to the popular messaging app Snapchat as well. As a part of the hacking, leaked emails surfaced yesterday which showed that Snapchat had turned down an offer worth more than $3 billion from Facebook.
As this report in The Verge points out Spiegel had been in touch via email with Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton and that the leaks revealed how the company had “secretly
bought a company that makes a Google Glass-like product” and Snapchat’s plans to “insert music into the app.”

Now Spiegel has spoken out against the hacking and wrote an open letter to his staff and board, which he shared on Twitter, slamming the incident. Check out his tweet below with the letter.
He wrote in the letter, “I’ve been feeling a lot of things since our business plans were made public last night. Definitely angry. Definitely devastated. I felt like I was going to cry all morning, so I went on walk and though through a couple of things.”

In the letter, Spiegel makes a case for keeping secrets and admits that keeping secrets helps ensure that they can go do their “work free from judgement, until we’re ready to share it… We care about taking time to get things right. Secrets help us do that.”

He added that, it’s not okay for people to get to take away all the ‘hard work’ they’ve done to surprise their friends, family and community and that it was wrong for people to steal their secrets and private
information and make it public. He ends his note saying, “We’re going to change the world because this is not the one that we want to live in.”

The leaked emails also mentioned personal conversations between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel and that Spiegel was ‘crazy’ to turn down such an offer.

The leak also revealed an email by Mitch Lasky, a board member at Snapchat, who stated that Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel would have received $1 billion if the Facebook had acquired the company. Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky email to Evan Spiegel also says that, “I know you have no interest in selling to him (Mark Zukerberg), but you want to keep on good terms with the enemy.”