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Why I love Snapchat

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Re: Why I love Snapchat

#11

Post by soneca »

TheBiv wrote: post #6
soneca wrote: post #3

"The cost of content creation is extremely low, and Snapchat makes it fun to think about what aspects of what I’m doing every day might be cool for other people to see." But what is the reward of content creation? Honest question. How do a user feel their effort in posting was worthy? I never used Snapchat, so I don't get it much. Although I'm for sure not dismissive as some, I just never tried it.

The reward are those random bits of validation you get from friends that say to you in real life "I loved your Snap the other day" and when your friends directly respond on snapchat

Smart! That plus striking comment: "You can see the number of, and names of, the people who view/screenshot your Story."

That ocasional and random reward that make something addictive (like what keep you checking your email all the time, at last receiving that one useful/interesting email in the middle of several useless one). Contrasting to predictable Facebook likes that are measured solely by quantity.

I end with the impression that is a more genuine connection than the commoditized "FB like" and more personal than the "Retweet" and "FB share" that are performed by people you don't even know.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#12

Post by minimaxir »

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.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#13

Post by joenot443 »

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.

What decisions specifically are you talking about?

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#14

Post by altonzheng »

I had a similar revelation a while back with Snapchat. Users complain that you can't create groups to send to, you have to manually select each person. I like this - it means when you receive a snapchat, you know that person intentionally selected you to share a part of their life with. It adds a subtle but meaningful quality to a message that could be considered spammy and impersonal.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#15

Post by parfe »

soneca wrote: post #3

"The cost of content creation is extremely low, and Snapchat makes it fun to think about what aspects of what I’m doing every day might be cool for other people to see." But what is the reward of content creation? Honest question. How do a user feel their effort in posting was worthy? I never used Snapchat, so I don't get it much. Although I'm for sure not dismissive as some, I just never tried it.

Maybe someone replies. Maybe they don't. It's a low effort way of saying "Hey, I find this thing is worth 10 seconds of your time." My friend sent me a snap of her niece throwing a temper tantrum. It was funny. I chuckled. It disappeared. We got lunch weeks later, and I asked if her niece ever calmed down. She laughed, we moved on. She got to share a funny moment in her life with me (and presumably other people) because she thought I might be interested.

If she posted on facebook? You'd have people asking what was wrong, giving advice on how to calm a child, commenting about child abuse, and writing essays about the ethics of posting children to social media. Whatever.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#16

Post by hendzen »

I think the DJ Khaled's use of Snapchat in particular is genius. The popularity of his Story feed really struck me when I was talking to a couple high-school aged relatives earlier this week.

Me: "So do you have any New Years resolutions?"

Kid 1: "They don't want you to have resolutions."

Me: ??

Kid 2: "Resolutions are the key to success!"

=================================

After that exchange, I think there are going to be a lot of musicians/actors/politicians making heavy use of Snapchat Stories in 2016.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#17

Post by vdnkh »

I wish Snapchat wasn't actively hostile to the WP market. They have outright refused to make an app and when the third party app 6snap appeared (which was quite good), they fought and had it removed. Rudy Huyun, the developer, even offered Snapchat the source code for free. Evan Spiegel even went so far as to mock the platform.

http://www.windowscentral.com/how-you-cant-get-snapchat-wind...

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#18

Post by jonesb6 »

soneca wrote: post #11
TheBiv wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reward are those random bits of validation you get from friends that say to you in real life "I loved your Snap the other day" and when your friends directly respond on snapchat

Smart! That plus striking comment: " You can see the number of, and names of, the people who view/screenshot your Story. " That ocasional and random reward that make something addictive (like what keep you checking your email all the time, at last receiving that one useful/interesting email in the middle of several useless one). Contrasting to predictable Facebook likes that are measured solely by quantity. I end wit…

With cash I can buy happiness, if I get a Facebook Like, Twitter follow, snapchat view, I feel happy, therefore Social media validation is like cash.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#19

Post by soneca »

parfe wrote: post #15
soneca wrote: post #3

"The cost of content creation is extremely low, and Snapchat makes it fun to think about what aspects of what I’m doing every day might be cool for other people to see." But what is the reward of content creation? Honest question. How do a user feel their effort in posting was worthy? I never used Snapchat, so I don't get it much. Although I'm for sure not dismissive as some, I just never tried it.

Maybe someone replies. Maybe they don't. It's a low effort way of saying "Hey, I find this thing is worth 10 seconds of your time." My friend sent me a snap of her niece throwing a temper tantrum. It was funny. I chuckled. It disappeared. We got lunch weeks later, and I asked if her niece ever calmed down. She laughed, we moved on. She got to share a funny moment in her life with me (and presumably other people) beca…

So Spapchat achieved what Path tried limiting friends? Real connections with real friends.

Funny thing, went to Path.com now and find out two interesting things: i) they have two apps at the same website now - Path, the social network and Talk, a messaging app; and ii) they don't even mention the 150 friends limit anymore (contrasting that it was the core feature and the epicenter of their launch campaign)

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#20

Post by paulgb »

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 remember reading a blog post in the MySpace era about how their bad UI was the key to their success. Look where they are now.
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