Why I love Snapchat • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#161

Post by justin » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 8:40 AM UTC

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.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#162

Post by justin » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 8:42 AM UTC

angryasian wrote: post #118

justin wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the default way most people use those services.

Ok thanks, that makes sense. I'm just curious when snapchat has longevity like twitter, and you have hundreds of people you're following their stories, how that User experience will be different than twitter or instagram at that point. I imagine, eventually they will need a way to curate the best user stories or active user stories out of your list of hundreds.

Snapchat works even better in this case, bc you'll still only tap the people you are interested in.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#163

Post by justin » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 8:45 AM UTC

dreamdu5t wrote: post #148

Snapchat is great if you have a group of friends who care about seeing random photos of your life throughout the day. What exactly am I supposed to "snap" while I'm sitting in an office all day staring at a computer? Take photos of my food? I don't understand how to participate when my life isn't filled with visual things to show people.

I just narrate the boring shit I'm doing

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#164

Post by corobo » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 10:36 AM UTC

tomasien wrote: post #138

goldenchrome wrote: post #62

I don't know what to say. I think OP did a good job of explaining what makes Snapchat so great, but their initial confusion and the confusion from the commenters within this thread boggles me. Recently I was in a room with a well-known VC who wouldn't believe a college student who said that they enjoy using Snapchat, as if they couldn't comprehend how anyone would like it. Virtually all the comments are about how Sna…

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 sure why I'm posting this, but it was such a sudden movement - and everyone virtually the same time too - I wonder if anything's happened in the past 3-6 months to cause that

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#165

Post by neak » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 11:15 AM UTC

hendzen wrote: post #16

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…

Catchphrases aren't new.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#166

Post by GBond » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 1:09 PM UTC

gragas wrote: post #72

jmduke wrote: post #25

I was about to make a snarky comment disagreeing with Justin -- as one of those folks who can't deal with Snapchat, I think it's a weird encapsulation of a lot of my complaints of newer social apps. The UX feels deliberately confusing and disorienting; it promotes a culture of manufactured intimacy; I have to deal with a bunch of software developers thinking they're hip by saying 'bless up' and flooding their social…

I'm 19. Reading Justin's post and your comment makes me squirm. The formality of actually writing paragraphs to describe how you feel contrasts with Snapchat so much. But the thing is, there's nothing wrong with being formal like that. And there's nothing wrong with Snapchat and key emojis. The overwhelming impression I get from your post is either 1) you don't understand Snapchat, or 2) you understand Snapchat, but…

Not A Snap; Didn't Read

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#167

Post by mercer » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 1:27 PM UTC

welly wrote: post #105

55555 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every real interaction you have in your life immediately disappears. Snapchat is like actually talking with somebody.

But why should interaction disappear if it doesn't have to? Snapchat is no more like talking with someone than Facebook Messenger is, with the exception that you get to keep your interaction with Facebook Messenger. While I "get" your point, I think it's a stretch in terms of what Snapchat offers that I can't get elsewhere with a better experience. But then, I'm well over 20 and from the comments on this post, defini…

Compare it to Twitter limiting your communication to 140 characters. Or Instagram limiting your posts to photos (as far as I know; never used it). Or Vine limiting you even more than Instagram. Or Tinder limiting you to swipes (compared to pretty much every other 'dating' app out there).

In all cases the limitation is rather arbitrary, and yet one of the primary defining aspects of each product. I don't think it's a stretch at all that the ephemeral nature of Snapchat is its main offering. I kind of wish more of my friends would use Snapchat, because I'm not always happy with the idea that everything I ever said to a friend via Facebook is stored and can be read and searched by them. And by Facebook.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#168

Post by AndrewKemendo » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 2:58 PM UTC

noelsusman wrote: post #136

NDizzle wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a base level, I'm not sure why you'd do something to have it disappear. Why would I write anything or record a short video that would self destruct?! It seems like it's for meaningless stuff. If you follow that logic far enough that means the whole thing is meaningless.

It's all about lowering the stakes in social interaction. It's one of the reasons why Twitter became so popular yet people continue to be baffled by it. Facebook has utterly failed on this front IMO. Most people realize that whatever they want to say to their friends is almost always unimportant and ultimately meaningless. This is how real life conversations work 99% of the time. When you post something to Facebook y…

Thanks for that explanation, as it makes it much clearer to me why people would use it.

I think its a different mindset that says "I want everyone to see this" for what would otherwise be mundane things. I know I never have the urge to broadcast to my friends regular everyday stuff like sitting around or working, but a significant amount of people do. Not saying if that is good or bad, I think it's just different.

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#169

Post by AndrewKemendo » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 3:02 PM UTC

nmat wrote: post #41

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.

The bad UI generates a sort of viral effect. I know a lot of young kids who use snapchat and often the conversation starts with 'How did you do that effect on that video?' or 'How do you send a text message without a picture?'. Snapchat is one of few apps that has a lot of hidden features for power users that are not explained anywhere. I am not saying that it is a good thing, but it makes people talk about it.

Isn't this the exact opposite of everything everyone preaches in product design? Doesn't that totally go against every best practice and case study of simple UX? For example how facebook mobile changed their notifications bar from the hamburger menu to the tab bar is held up as a great change cause it makes things easier.

Same for almost the entirety of apple products.

What gives?

Re: Why I love Snapchat

#170

Post by AndrewKemendo » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 3:03 PM UTC

andylei wrote: post #97

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.

or maybe UX doesn't matter

Then what does?