Inside many businesses, emails and electronic communications are the primary—and sometimes only—way people communicate. As one federal judge noted, email has not only replaced paper memos and letters, but “many informal messages that were previously relayed by telephone or at the water cooler are now sent via email.”1
But the convenience of electronic communication comes with some costs: Email’s persistence and ease of duplication mean that once a message has been sent, the author loses all control over it. Emails can be easily distributed well beyond their intended audience, and often reemerge to the detriment of the sender in litigation or other disputes. Snapchat, an app that allows users to send picture and video messages that “self-destruct” after viewing, has achieved a $2 billion valuation by offering at least a partial solution to these problems. Encouraged by Snapchat’s success, several recently launched apps aim to bring “self-destructing” messages to a more business-minded user demographic.
