Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I love Snapchat

justinkan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 176 posts

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#91

Post by sveit »

NDizzle wrote: post #90
goldenchrome wrote: post #62

I don't know what to say. I think OP did a good job of explaining what makes Snapchat so great, but their initial confusion and the confusion from the commenters within this thread boggles me. Recently I was in a room with a well-known VC who wouldn't believe a college student who said that they enjoy using Snapchat, as if they couldn't comprehend how anyone would like it. Virtually all the comments are about how Sna…

At a base level, I'm not sure why you'd do something to have it disappear. Why would I write anything or record a short video that would self destruct?! It seems like it's for meaningless stuff. If you follow that logic far enough that means the whole thing is meaningless.

If you have a face-to-face conversation with a friend (assuming no eavesdropping devices are around) everything you say "self destructs". You'll feel freer to say certain things knowing that they will only persist in your friend's memory.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#92

Post by Nadya »

NDizzle wrote: post #90
goldenchrome wrote: post #62

I don't know what to say. I think OP did a good job of explaining what makes Snapchat so great, but their initial confusion and the confusion from the commenters within this thread boggles me. Recently I was in a room with a well-known VC who wouldn't believe a college student who said that they enjoy using Snapchat, as if they couldn't comprehend how anyone would like it. Virtually all the comments are about how Sna…

At a base level, I'm not sure why you'd do something to have it disappear. Why would I write anything or record a short video that would self destruct?! It seems like it's for meaningless stuff. If you follow that logic far enough that means the whole thing is meaningless.

There's a certain beauty behind transient moments. It follows a separate line of thinking than that of people used to keeping digital archives of their lives.

The Japanese cherry blossoms are a bittersweet moment during the spring. People go flower-watching (花見) to admire the beauty and it is a happy time. But it is also a sad time, because it is only for a fleeting moment before the time has gone and another year must pass before you can see them bloom.

What makes them so special is that they do no last forever. If the cherry blossoms were in bloom year-round, they would not be any less beautiful - but I do not think they would see as much popularity. They would become commonplace and ignored.

Not everything needs to live on forever - and some things would "suffer" if they did.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#93

Post by 55555 »

NDizzle wrote: post #90
goldenchrome wrote: post #62

I don't know what to say. I think OP did a good job of explaining what makes Snapchat so great, but their initial confusion and the confusion from the commenters within this thread boggles me. Recently I was in a room with a well-known VC who wouldn't believe a college student who said that they enjoy using Snapchat, as if they couldn't comprehend how anyone would like it. Virtually all the comments are about how Sna…

At a base level, I'm not sure why you'd do something to have it disappear. Why would I write anything or record a short video that would self destruct?! It seems like it's for meaningless stuff. If you follow that logic far enough that means the whole thing is meaningless.

Every real interaction you have in your life immediately disappears. Snapchat is like actually talking with somebody.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#94

Post by andylei »

NDizzle wrote: post #90
goldenchrome wrote: post #62

I don't know what to say. I think OP did a good job of explaining what makes Snapchat so great, but their initial confusion and the confusion from the commenters within this thread boggles me. Recently I was in a room with a well-known VC who wouldn't believe a college student who said that they enjoy using Snapchat, as if they couldn't comprehend how anyone would like it. Virtually all the comments are about how Sna…

At a base level, I'm not sure why you'd do something to have it disappear. Why would I write anything or record a short video that would self destruct?! It seems like it's for meaningless stuff. If you follow that logic far enough that means the whole thing is meaningless.

life is meaningless. everything is meaningless.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#95

Post by engulfme »

NDizzle wrote: post #90
goldenchrome wrote: post #62

I don't know what to say. I think OP did a good job of explaining what makes Snapchat so great, but their initial confusion and the confusion from the commenters within this thread boggles me. Recently I was in a room with a well-known VC who wouldn't believe a college student who said that they enjoy using Snapchat, as if they couldn't comprehend how anyone would like it. Virtually all the comments are about how Sna…

At a base level, I'm not sure why you'd do something to have it disappear. Why would I write anything or record a short video that would self destruct?! It seems like it's for meaningless stuff. If you follow that logic far enough that means the whole thing is meaningless.

It's not really intended for things you'd want to persist forever. If you'd like to, you can easily save the image or video. The idea is sharing your current experience with others in a way that you cannot really on Facebook or Instagram.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#96

Post by ikailan »

One thing that isn't mentioned is that the "friction" in selecting your friends is actually a positive. Instead of someone just shouting out to the world, my friend actually picked my name to receive some post. Not to mention: Snapchat has this built in status for how often users snap each other back. It's a built-in mechanism to get me to respond, similar to the way Facebook wanted it's "Sling" app to work, but without forcing the issue.

I used Snapchat with a very small number of good friends fairly heavily for about a month. Things we shared:

- what we ate - walking to work - on the bus/train - waiting in line - nothing at all - drawing on pictures of people - example: a friend is watching ESPN talk about the owner of the 49ers, Jed York, and drew a dunce cap on his head

I think we averaged 10 messages a day each.

Basically, for us, Snapchat was for sharing photos too stupid or personal for Facebook or Instagram.

The stickiness eventually faded. We got tired of seeing the same food, the same office, the same bus every day. Contrary to how we might represent ourselves on Facebook (SUPER AWESOME!!!!), Snapchat showed each other how utterly mundane our lives were. Of the original group of ~5 people, there's maybe one left.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#97

Post by andylei »

minimaxir wrote: post #12

The problem I have with Snapchat is that there are many deliberate, counterintuitive UI/UX decisions which make the app hard to use. This causes a lot of bad post-hoc rationalization from many startups that "Snapchat is a multibillion dollar startup, and they have these bad UX features, therefore if we have these X features we will be successful too!" And thus the startup ecosystem as a whole gets dragged down.

or maybe UX doesn't matter

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#98

Post by NDizzle »

55555 wrote: post #93
NDizzle wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a base level, I'm not sure why you'd do something to have it disappear. Why would I write anything or record a short video that would self destruct?! It seems like it's for meaningless stuff. If you follow that logic far enough that means the whole thing is meaningless.

Every real interaction you have in your life immediately disappears. Snapchat is like actually talking with somebody.

Can you tell who has read or seen your posts? I guess I mean, when I talk to someone I know they are there. I don't want to feel pressured to look at the feed every day on the chance of missing something.

I feel like the people I talk to, I already talk to. Internet people are internet people - and I'd like them to approach my missives at their own pace. Not have an inspector-gadget like timer associated with the posts.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#99

Post by meat_fist »

Umn44 wrote: post #86
goldenchrome wrote: post #62

I don't know what to say. I think OP did a good job of explaining what makes Snapchat so great, but their initial confusion and the confusion from the commenters within this thread boggles me. Recently I was in a room with a well-known VC who wouldn't believe a college student who said that they enjoy using Snapchat, as if they couldn't comprehend how anyone would like it. Virtually all the comments are about how Sna…

> This kind of empathy with others will make you much more effective when you're creating for people who are not like you. Empathy has nothing to do with it, most people who use computers are stupid or if they are smart have irrational traits. Our ancient primate brain is easily fooled. Apple's ipod was not technically superior to competing MP3 players. Steve jobs was not a genius, he was just taking advantage of the…

This comment is very unempathetic. You're taking a very strong "if you don't agree with me you are stupid" approach, which is pretty much the exact opposite of empathy.

Also, most of the things that you've said are entirely subjective. You're stating your own opinions as fact, which most of us (me) would say is something a stupid, unempathetic person would do.

Post reply on HN