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Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

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201–210 of 309 posts

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#201

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…

There is nothing to "get". It's all the same. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat. People want a free way to broadcast to their friends. Someone invents a service that does that. Slowly ads take over. Now the stream needs to be "curated". It's no longer a timeline. It's no longer sensible. Now you can no longer reliably broadcast to your friends. People search for a new service that did what the old service used t…

>Someone invents a service that does that. Slowly ads take over.

The problem really is that no one wants to pay for services, or no one is willing to try charging for their services. Ads are the "safe" option, but it will also make your users leave in the long run.

I was pretty baffled when a publisher wrote that they would rather make money from ads on their site, than make money from people buying a subscription. Service like Twitter, Snapchat and what not seems to be the same way, there's no desire to try anything but ads.

It is still my belief that at some point some large seller of physical goods will announce that they're pull their online ads due to lack of profitability. After that the entire online media business will be forced to charge their users, and we'll all be better off. Maybe it's just wishful thinking.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#202

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? > 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? if I would care about what every single friend of mine is doing…

But how can you validate your own existence, if you don't have other lives to compare it against?! ;) I think the whole phenomenon is fascinating - people these days can't experience anything without photographing it, or updating their status about it. It's as if they need to prove that it really happened.

Humble brag/narcissism. One of the main ingredients to fuel social networks.

It's not that it doesn't exist in physical gatherings, it's just way more concentrated online because of convenience.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#203

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).

That's probably not true. When you're just socializing in real life, you're probably sharing all kinds of meaningless "updates" about yourself. Statements, jokes, expressions, etc that aren't important individually, nobody wants to keep records of and you don't care if they get missed. You wouldn't ask your friends to tell you those things because they're so trivial, but they're still how people enjoy each other's company. That's a lot of what friends do when they're together - share minutia. To me, Snapchat is kind of like that but on the internet.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 deve…

I couldn't agree more with the points you raised. Social media services have their place and they can be a valuable tool.

By the way, I'd never heard of the term "self media" but I think it is perfect. I'm going to start using it now.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#205

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…

There is nothing to "get". It's all the same. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat. People want a free way to broadcast to their friends. Someone invents a service that does that. Slowly ads take over. Now the stream needs to be "curated". It's no longer a timeline. It's no longer sensible. Now you can no longer reliably broadcast to your friends. People search for a new service that did what the old service used t…

I honestly don't think you get it. I've lived through all major social networks and the only one I've shared stuff on is Snapchat. It's a major breakthrough for me.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#206
post #195
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> If you aren't around to hear the latest gossip (Snapchat story), you will miss out.

Who said gossips? "Stories" have and utterly different meaning to me.

Journals stick around. Letters stick around. Notes stick around. They are important. We evolved to write, not just talk, and reading back who you have been 10 years ago, even if it's just a plain entry, can be surprisingly useful to maintain a healthy soul, especially in times when you think things are slipping away.

Take away the option to remember, what are you left with?

And no, I'm not exaggerating. No one scrolls back any more; yesterday deliberately out of interest, and I disagree with this from the bottom of my heart.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#207
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes you just want to share a photo from your daily routine with your family to just let them know you are ok. So not so trivial. In this context why should I have to think about how relevant this stuff is hanging around 5 years from now.

Why would you think about whether it was relevant in 5 years? I've literally never cared or thought about that when sending those kinds of messages. It's just a basic picture, not sexting or something else potentially sensitive. I don't understand why I should force everyone I know to install yet another random social media app when a regular message works just fine.

Ok, we understand that you don't get it but what's with the tone where you're basically disputing Snapchat's success? This is a popular way of communicating these days. Deal with it. Snapchat is the only social media I've ever shared anything on. For me it's revolutionary.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing to "get". It's all the same. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat. People want a free way to broadcast to their friends. Someone invents a service that does that. Slowly ads take over. Now the stream needs to be "curated". It's no longer a timeline. It's no longer sensible. Now you can no longer reliably broadcast to your friends. People search for a new service that did what the old service used t…

>Someone invents a service that does that. Slowly ads take over. The problem really is that no one wants to pay for services, or no one is willing to try charging for their services. Ads are the "safe" option, but it will also make your users leave in the long run. I was pretty baffled when a publisher wrote that they would rather make money from ads on their site, than make money from people buying a subscription. S…

> or no one is willing to try charging for their services

app.net tried, but it was not successful.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#209
People here only think about how they use Twitter and Snapchat. My first thought would be: Snapchat has more girls with less clothes. It is not the content we are looking for, but that's what draws a lot of young guys and girls there. Twitter offers content. That is nice, but not so interesting to the amount of people that would be willing to use new apps.

That you can show your daily life to your friends and family is also nice, certainly may be the tip to lead to higher traffic than twitter, but it's probably not the majority usecase.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The old remember what it was to be young. The young do not remember what it was to be old.

> The old remember what it was to be young.

Not what, how.

(The emotional perspective is blown away, a skeleton of selected facts remains.

Besides no man being a hero to his valet, usually his older self is not a fan either.)

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