Amid the avalanche of coverage that greeted Snap’s IPO filing, there were many important questions being raised that offered important insights into the company and the evolution of our mobile consumption habits.
But the world pondered perhaps the most critical question of all: Is Snap the first company to use the word “sexting” in its S-1?
best line in Snapchat's IPO filing/first use of "sexting" in an S-1? https://t.co/gTW91gtlnw (h/t @m_delamerced) pic.twitter.com/xCOXfatJ8L
— Sapna Maheshwari (@sapna) February 2, 2017
Answer: nope.
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Back in 2011, a company called ProText Mobility filed to go public. In explaining its SafeText product, the company wrote:
The application empowers parents to keep their children safe by providing effective and comprehensive safeguards against text and social-based communications, such as ‘cyber-bullying’ and ‘sexting.’ SafeText provides parents with a robust toolset which allows them to reliably monitor their children’s mobile phone activities including texts, photos, location, speed, mobile web history, call logs, and apps.
In the end, things did not go so well for ProText. It had mostly wound down its business in recent years. Earlier this month, it announced a reverse merger with a South African biopharmaceutical company that used ProText’s corporate shell to go public.
Use of the word “sexting” remains rare in public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Viacom used it once on Nov. 15, 2012 when referencing one of its shows: “MTV’s A Thin Line: addressing the growing threat of sexting, cyberbullying and digital dating abuse.”
The only other company to use it, and the first in an SEC filing, was a company called Blindspot Alert. In a filing on August 5, 2009, the company described one of its products:
WebSafetyPC provides many of the features available on CellSafety phones such as alerts for cyber bullying,sexting, and predator alerts. The president of Mothers Against Predators says of her experience, ‘The predator who attacked my daughter didn’t come in through a window…he came in through my computer.’”
