Why I love Snapchat • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#171

Post by mattlutze » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 3:41 PM UTC

dorian-graph wrote: post #84

justin wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My initial confusion came from 1) not immediately understanding how the UI worked, 2) not being that interested in learning because few of my social network were one it. Once I invested a few minutes in understanding it out I loved it. I think the same would be true for many other people who "don't get it".

It's concerning that those who don't get it then act confused about why anyone else would like it. It seems like out of 2 possible responses, the ideal should be b) a) I don't understand it or see the appeal, then why do other people like it? b) I don't like it or see the appeal, but others do. Cool.

For social networks in particular, the "I don't get it, here comes the criticism" reaction is a good thing. If a new social network / app is going to grow a devoted, core group of user evangelists, there needs to be a clear delineation between the in-group and out-group to help them adopt the network as part of their personal identity.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#172

Post by cmadan » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 4:50 PM UTC

ocean3 wrote: post #160

cmadan wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instagram is pretty huge in India already. It has about 6M monthly active users and is installed on almost everyone in my age group's (25-35) phones. Snapchat on the other hand, most people won't know about it. However, I bet its drastically going to change in two years. Whatsapp is basically an SMS replacement - it lacks media rich features and as mobile internet speeds improve in India, people will gravitate toward…

I am in same age bracket. They barely know Instagram. It used to be facebook all the time now Whatsapp has taken over it. Why do you consider whatsapps lacking in media. You can upload photos, videos. If they allowed documents it would have been better.

Maybe our social circles are different :). Snapchat has high resolution pictures & videos, filters, adding captions, adding emoji to pictures, drawing stuff on it. Whatsapp photos and videos functionality is just barely better than MMS.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#173

Post by tomasien » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 5:02 PM UTC

corobo wrote: post #164

tomasien wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snapchat is the most important social network right now among my friends. I'm 27 (so not core Snapchat demo but close) and very few of my friends work in tech. It's massive. Instagram and Facebook are both close, but if something is happening there's a 5x better chance someone is going to Snap it than Insta it and 50x chance they'll Snap it than do anything with it on FB.

I think I may have crossed the age barrier of target market and not very recently (also 27). A year or so ago snapchat was massive within my friend circle, to the point where normal messages would be superimposed over a selfie or just a picture of whatever the person was doing or seeing right now. A few months back however it rapidly faded and everyone moved back to Facebook Messenger. I'll be honest I'm not even sur…

Interesting! I never get FB messanger messages but I know from the numbers that obviously it's huge.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#174

Post by andylei » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 6:35 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #170

andylei wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or maybe UX doesn't matter

Then what does?

i don't know. some possibilities i can think of: value proposition, features, market positioning, network effects

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#175

Post by bambax » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 11:23 PM UTC

justin wrote: post #161

bambax wrote: post #157

> There’s no public view count, follower count, likes count, or any other social dick-measuring contest And then at the end: > Add me at: justinkan Why does he need to be seen by strangers if the whole point is to exchange "low quality content" between friends?? That said, the concept of "linear channel" is interesting, even if I'm not sure I understood everything about it.

I like getting feedback. Also I broadcasted my life to strangers and it worked out well the first time -- we turned it into a billion dollar company.

After "pivoting", no? Or did you sell footage of your life for that amount?

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#176

Post by StavrosK » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 10:58 PM UTC

onewaystreet wrote: post #50

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.

I often see people over 20 complain about Snapchat's UI/UX, and yet the app has millions of daily users. I don't think it's successful in spite of its UI/UX, so there is something to be learned there if you are developing a new social app.

I doubt this. I saw Snapchat and thought "okay, this is it, this is what getting old is. There's a program I can't figure out".

Then I asked a 16-year-old niece if she finds it intuitive, and, no, she was as baffled by it as I am. So it's just bad UX. I've spent the three minutes acquainting myself with it since, so now I can use it fine, but yeah, it's definitely bad UX.