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Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

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Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#231

Post by fauigerzigerk »

It's amazing how misguided this article is.

Twitter is a publishing platform. You go there for (links to) news, blog posts, commentary on particular subjects (some of them very niche), notifications of events or live reporting of something happening in public.

Why does every form of communication have to fit the mold of "keeping in touch with friends and family" and match the user numbers that these services inherently deliver?

I'm so fed up with the dominance of "keeping up with friends and family". I have better things to do than to "keep up" with pointless brain farts and daily routines of people I know.

And why is everything measured by what kids or teenagers do? So much so that people on here pride themselves of "getting" snapchat in spite of their advanced age (>30) as if that was difficult or any sort of achievement.

The salient feature of teenagers is that most of them haven't yet found anything that they are deeply interested in. Most of them don't have very complicated social relationships yet as they don't have a past with anyone. They are not held accountable for anything, and they don't have to make well informed or consequential decisions yet.

In other words, their demand for information and communication is hard to predict but can often be met by something totally inadequate for others. So it's not about "getting it", it's about finding it unfit for purpose.

There's a pattern in the demise of Google Reader and Twitter's current problems. It seems to be difficult for internet behemoths to justify investment into the significant but limited niche of people with advanced information needs.

I wish Twitter had the courage to try to increase usage, utility and depth instead of growing user numbers. And no, it's not an inherent problem with capitalism. There are many successful, publicly traded companies that do something useful, make a profit, and don't grow much.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#232

Post by sorenjan »

batiudrami wrote: post #85
nostromo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all the talk of Snapchat being confusing, I think that Twitter is more confusing and hostile to new users than is Snapchat. And I'm also in my 30s. I've had a Twitter account for like eight years now and I'm still not sure how to have a conversation with someone. And trying to read a conversation with many replies confounds me every time.

It doesn't help that Twitter is unbelievably slow, and loaded with on-demand loading and other nonsense that would be much faster (and possibly lighter) if they just loaded replies with expandos. And then I'm following a conversation in a shitty popup above my feed, click "view more replies" and suddenly I'm on someone else's twitter profile and not my news feed? And I press "back" and I have to scroll back to where…

I don't understand why these giant social media behemoths are so bad at web design which should be one of their core competences. Another example is Instagram hijacking middle click, so I can't open images in new tabs.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#233

Post by weavie »

mrweasel wrote: post #201
themagician wrote: post #145

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…

So what is the alternative? We don't want to pay, we don't want ads.. how else can these things make money?

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#234

Post by mrweasel »

weavie wrote: post #233
mrweasel wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

So what is the alternative? We don't want to pay, we don't want ads.. how else can these things make money?

My alternative isn't one that most people would accept, but I'd be fine with money losing companies ceasing to exist.

I'm fairly confident that Snapchat could make money charging their users, if the fee is sufficiently small. Say $10 per year, perhaps as an in-app purchase, with the first 6 month being free.

We also may have to accept that some of these companies, Twitter seems the most obvious, isn't actually providing anything of tangible value to the average user and therefore can't exist. Of cause if some investors wants to keep throwing money at Twitter to keep the lights on, they're more than welcome. I know I'm not exactly being friendly towards Twitter, but it's a great example of a company that needs to fail. The only reason they don't is because investors have already wasted so much money that they're desperately trying so save it in hope of making the money back, by some miracle. Part of it might also be that investors, journalists and bankers are so heavy users of Twitter that they fail to see that the business isn't sustainable.

In the end the user will always be the one to pay the bill. Either by directly paying, or indirectly via advertising.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#235

Post by Teeboo »

themagician wrote: post #145
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…

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…

This.

This. This. This. This. This.

I believe the value of the social networking platform to a user is inverse to the maturity of the company.

Facebook has already become choked with it's own content and advertisements so the next generation migrate to a "cleaner" platform. The centre of gravity shifts. New platform monetises and the choking cycle begins anew...

The stages -

Stage 1:

Platform Exclusivity

Platform Coveted

Platform Expanded

Stage 2:

Platform Opened

Platform Developed (upon)

Platform Expanded

Stage 3

Platform Monetised

PLatform Curated

Platform Locked (to previous developers to protect revenue streams)

Stage 4

Platfrom Alternatives

Platform Decline

Platform Obsolescence

You could, quite easily Venn Diagram where the current social media services are and how they are eating the older's market share. As platforms lock developers out, other pre-revenue companies are opening up to those developers stealing previously allegiant demographics.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#236

Post by mrweasel »

majewsky wrote: post #223
raimue wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or no one is willing to try charging for their services app.net tried, but it was not successful.

In Germany, especially since Snowden, there is a healthy niche for paid mail providers, such as posteo.de or mailbox.org. I pay 1€ per month for my mailbox because it allows me to be certain that I'm the customer, not the product.

I pay a little more for KolabNow, but I'm happy to do it.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#237

Post by lovemenot »

wepple wrote: post #99
stormbeta wrote: post #44

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 the part I still don't get. Why would I want to constantly spam my friends with trivial photos of my daily life? Disappearing spam is still spam. I'm 28, nobody I know uses snapchat/instagram/whatever so I haven't actually used it. If it's something I actu…

for me living ~30 hours flight from my nearest family, getting short snapchats of whatever things they're up-to, however trivial, makes them seem so much closer. And given that they're less likely to be 'staged' instagram/fb photos, it seems more real to me.

>> for me living ~30 hours flight from my nearest family,

Where in the world do you and your family live? I imagine you must be in Antarctica?

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#238

Post by ionised »

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.

I have friends I care about, but I don't need to know what they are up to every day any more than they need to know about me, let alone every hour of every day.

Re: Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage

#239

Post by Jach »

puranjay wrote: post #216
xux wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Damn, that's a good point. I'll use this as my retort to anyone who says they don't want their content to disappear

And then they reveal they are in fact recording every moment of their lives with at least audio if not video too. Ideally also measuring the air to replicate smells later if desired.

If such was cheap and easy, I'd do it 24/7. I hate that my brain's storage is so volatile, and I wish I remembered dead people better. But yeah GP is still a good point, my desire is a separate issue from not wanting one's efforts to 'go to waste' by not being preserved. An honest introspection will reveal just how much is 'wasted' all the time from that point of view, it's far more than just ephemeral updates or unrecorded and unremembered speech.

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