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Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

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Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#191

Post by prostoalex »

stormbeta wrote: post #105
ChazDazzle wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thirty something here. The stories aren't spam since they don't trigger notifications and you have to intentionally click on them to watch. When i'm not feeling social I ignore snapchat, when i am, i know i can check in and see what my friends are doing.

I'm still lost. Maybe I just have radically different friends than everyone else here, but if I really have some pressing need to know what they're doing on a given day, I just ask them. Nobody cares about the day-to-day minutia, and if it was interesting, stuff like FB or regular messages work just fine. Like most social media apps, this just feels like a solution in search of a problem (except for sexting).

You are right to be confused. "Social sharing" came out of Snapchat marketing department when it became obvious you couldn't build a long-term business on a product that was synonymous with sexting.

Snapchat's core is still revolving around soft erotic eye candy that's developed into a cottage industry at this point http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-arsenictv-snapchat-in... Now that they've got your attention there, they are bringing in media partners like BuzzFeed, Entertainment Weekly and celebrities http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-how-snapchat-built-a-... to fill up your feed with a stream of bite-size updates.

Peer-to-peer ephemeral messaging is no longer emphasized in the app, they are building a media destination to divert eyeballs away from TV, YouTube, Vine, Facebook or Twitter, in that rough order. Referring to ephemeral social messaging at this point as akin to bringing up Yahoo! as a directory of web links.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#192

Post by J-dawg »

themagician wrote: post #156
kobayashi wrote: post #150

Well, you're right that the ad problem drives people away, but you're wrong in saying that they deliver the same information in a functionally different but essentially similar method. I broadcast and ingest very different information on Snapchat than I ever did on facebook. The ephemeral nature of Snapchat, combined with the lack of public "likes" makes it a much more positive experience to post, and thus I in turn…

Because you got into Facebook so late. People who are 20 are doing on Snapchat today what I did on Facebook when I was 20: multicasting. I either want to send a message to everyone or to a group. Sometimes in a personal message. I see almost no real difference in content. Snapchat might be a little racier in personal messages, but that happened on FB and Twitter as well. The ephemeral nature was built into Facebook a…

Great post.

> There is nothing to "get" other than to understand that as you become older the thing that's changing is you

For proof of this, look no further than when Facebook introduced the timeline, making it easier to view old wall posts.

People went crazy, claiming their private messages had been made public [0]. In truth, they just couldn't remember how unconcerned with privacy they used to be.

[0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19699205

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#193

Post by pmlnr »

sharkweek wrote: post #15

30something here - It took me a while to "get" Snapchat, but in my opinion there is no better way to keep up with friends and family digitally than via Snapchat Stories. You can post pretty shamelessly the little things you're up to all day to your story, knowing it will be gone in 24 hours, keeping your feed really clean. Posting more than once or twice a day to Instagram/Facebook seems excessive, Twitter is a bit m…

> You can post pretty shamelessly the little things you're up to all day to your story, knowing it will be gone in 24 hours, keeping your feed really clean.

This is sad. The whole thought; the whole idea that I can't read things back; to post apparently meaningless "stories" into the void.

We have/had blogs for this, with the exceptions that those are not ephemeral. To read back you own stories, your own mistakes are invaluable lessons and not having the option to do this, because you depend on a service provider, where you have no control saddens me deeply.

Get a WordPress and make posts disappear automatically after X hours - this is ~5 mins to set up and this way you can both keep and retrieve your stories from the public.

Once this is done post to Snapchat from that blog; via webhooks, bots, whatever. Yes, right now, this is tedious and requires technical knowledge, but the goal is to own your data. But do not store the only copy your original content somewhere where you have no control at all. (See http://indiewebcamp.com/POSSE for the whole idea)

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#194

Post by huuu »

rrggrr wrote: post #28

My 77 year old father forced himself to learn Twitter. Why? Financial news. My journalist friends live on Twitter. Why? Breaking political news. People I follow in national security circles... on twitter. After a certain number (age or users) its not about quantity but quality.

Are you sure about the quality?

I watched Twitter after EgyptAir flight 804 was lost. And I was amazed by the amount of shit I got to see. Everybody was placing assumptions, unknown 'facts', stupidity and so on.

Sometimes I saw a relevant post but then it got reposted a trillion.

Maybe some streams are of good quality. But my breaking news experience was not of high quality I must say.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#195

Post by jug »

pmlnr wrote: post #193
sharkweek wrote: post #15

30something here - It took me a while to "get" Snapchat, but in my opinion there is no better way to keep up with friends and family digitally than via Snapchat Stories. You can post pretty shamelessly the little things you're up to all day to your story, knowing it will be gone in 24 hours, keeping your feed really clean. Posting more than once or twice a day to Instagram/Facebook seems excessive, Twitter is a bit m…

> You can post pretty shamelessly the little things you're up to all day to your story, knowing it will be gone in 24 hours, keeping your feed really clean. This is sad. The whole thought; the whole idea that I can't read things back; to post apparently meaningless "stories" into the void. We have/had blogs for this, with the exceptions that those are not ephemeral. To read back you own stories, your own mistakes are…

Sad? I think Snapchat manages to be successful because the messages are not meaningless just because they are later removed, but because they are as meaningful and easily relatable as normal conversations. If you aren't around to hear the latest gossip (Snapchat story), you will miss out. But it doesn't matter, because it's not about life or death. Not something even intended to be saved, catalogued, scrutinized. And for direct messages, they will go away as soon as they are read or seen. Just like in real life. They don't stick around, hovering around for retrieval months later. I think this reduces the cognitive load and makes it easier for people to share what they would be able to share in real life.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#196

Post by Sacho »

brianwawok wrote: post #69
ChazDazzle wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thirty something here. The stories aren't spam since they don't trigger notifications and you have to intentionally click on them to watch. When i'm not feeling social I ignore snapchat, when i am, i know i can check in and see what my friends are doing.

Why don't you ask them if you want to know what they are doing? I still don't get it.

I am amazed this sentiment keeps popping up over and over in this thread. Asking them is exactly the kind of synchronous, flow-breaking communication that programmers should be keenly aware of. People are naturally discovering that polling is worse than event driven notifications, and it's great to watch.

There are plenty of arguments to make in favor of synchronous, face-to-face etc communication, about the loss of privacy when you broadcast everything you do, about the lack of personal engagement in this kind of communication, and so on. I can see making a judgement call whether to participate in this kind of communication, because there are plenty of drawbacks and negatives.

However, it's obvious to me why people are willingly switching some(most?) of their communication to it. Just as we learned to use asynchronous I/O in place of synchronous, we started using multicast messages and event-driven notifications instead of polling over all your friend-handles "hey what did you do today". It seems like a natural progression to me.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#197

Post by sbardle »

plaidturtle wrote: post #123
sharkweek wrote: post #15

30something here - It took me a while to "get" Snapchat, but in my opinion there is no better way to keep up with friends and family digitally than via Snapchat Stories. You can post pretty shamelessly the little things you're up to all day to your story, knowing it will be gone in 24 hours, keeping your feed really clean. Posting more than once or twice a day to Instagram/Facebook seems excessive, Twitter is a bit m…

early 20 something here. My friends and I went "offline" and we are much closer and happier. Social media is overrated. I think we will look back at this time in the future like how we look back at cigarette smoking in the 50s. It has its place but its usefulness is limited. I don't question Snapchat's business potential, though. edit: also I find it funny (and pathetic) how industry analyst struggle to understand so…

I'm in the same boat. I was chatting to some Chinese business people yesterday. What we call social media, they call "self media". I think that is a better description of how most of us use social networks, i.e. to broadcast ourselves. But there is still underlying value in the connectness which social networks enable. For example my local community is using Facebook to bring everyone together to oppose a gravel development next to our local school. It's a great way of keeping everyone informed, quickly, and at no cost. Some people are really creative too, such as uploading videos of the proposed site using drones to show what we would lose. So I think to be useful, "self media" has to truly evolve into "social" media.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#198

Post by shrikant »

xux wrote: post #63
edpichler wrote: post #62

I really respect the Snapchat service, but the thing is that I don't like to create things that will disappear. If I want a thing to disappear I simply don't create it. I believe I am an exception, I see a lot of people that loves Snapchat because it erases things after a while. May I still don't have the problem Snapchat was created to solve.

> If I want a thing to disappear I simply don't create it. The point is that it mimics a natural conversation. Do you refuse to speak just because no one is recording you?

I will admit to being one of the Snapchat non-getters, despite having tried to use it for over a month. (Maybe I don't have enough friends that actively use it?)

I will also admit that I was of the same opinion as GP comment. However, this analogy of yours just blew my mind -- I've never thought of it that way!

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#199

Post by rimantas »

trevor-e wrote: post #169
justinpombrio wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you have more than a handful of friends that you're trying to keep in touch with, are you really going to ask every single one of them what they're up to each day? Good god why would I care? I imagine this difference in attitude accounts for some of the confusion over snapchat's purpose.

> Good god why would I care? If you're not interested in what your friends are up to, why are you friends with them in the first place? Maybe they're really just acquaintances? Like you said, maybe it's a difference in attitude. Still, I recommend you giving it a shot to get a better idea of what it is. I also thought it was dumb at first.

Quite an interesting concept of friends you have there.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#200

Post by lazzlazzlazz »

bane wrote: post #112
dcw303 wrote: post #93

Social media networks are like night clubs. Myspace was edgy and underground, then it got invaded by the masses and it was no longer trendy, so everyone went to Facebook. Facebook was good for a while but now your parents and family are in every conversation. How much fun can you have in a nightclub with your parents watching everything you do? Twitter is more like a massive dance hall filled with people shouting at…

Meanwhile, we all still have email, phones, snail mail and texting.

I hardly use email outside of work (what is it for, other than receiving newsletters I've lost interest in?), my phone is just for the internet, snail mail is literally just for spam and government communications, and texting has been replaced with Facebook Messenger/WhatsApp/Snapchat/literally anything.
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