Of course it did. What's more appealing, a socially acceptable method for your girlfriend to send nude photos of herself to your phone that are then removed (allegedly). OR Facebook, which is just reaching popularity with your parents...
Facebook.
Snapchat usage triples among teens in the last year
21–27 of 27 posts
Re: Snapchat usage triples among teens in the last year
#22Nevermind teens. I'm 42. I use it with my adult siblings, cousins and friends. It's a delightful way to stay in touch. Sometimes it's a picture of my breakfast, or the weather outside, or our pets, or whatever other amusing moment is going on in our day that we'd laugh about if we were together. The ephemeral nature of the pictures and the ability to scribble on them is just delightful fun.
I've found Wickr to be more secure and comes from a company that really seems to care about users. Where Snapchat is an illusion of ephemeral messaging, Wickr is the real deal.
Re: Snapchat usage triples among teens in the last year
#23Nevermind teens. I'm 42. I use it with my adult siblings, cousins and friends. It's a delightful way to stay in touch. Sometimes it's a picture of my breakfast, or the weather outside, or our pets, or whatever other amusing moment is going on in our day that we'd laugh about if we were together. The ephemeral nature of the pictures and the ability to scribble on them is just delightful fun.
This is exactly what makes Snapchat fun and addictive. It takes all the friction out of taking photos and boils it right down. With Instagram, you spend a lot of time taking the right photo, the right lighting, the right filter, the right caption, etc. All of this is gone with Snapchat, because you know it'll be gone. People are happy to share slightly embarrassing stuff, like a mouthful of burger or no makeup. Selec…
I agree with all your points re: taking the friction out of the equation. However, I think it's more to do with the fact that you share with individuals rather than to a feed that makes the difference. Not so much the fact that it will sort of vanish after it gets viewed (less so now that they can get replayed)
When you share to a feed you'e sending it out for everyone to see. You want to know that people saw it and with services like Instagram and Facebook this is done via commenting and Liking/Favoriting.
With Snapchat you fire and forget. No one needs to like the picture in order for you to feel any sort of satisfaction. The only indicator you get is that it was viewed at all - and with the sort of content that gets sent over Snapchat, that's really all the information you need anyways.
TL;DR: I think the "choose indiciduals to send to" model is more important than the "they get erased" aspect. Of course, the vanishing part of it is what got Snapchat to become popular in the first place so it would be wrong to say they would have seen the same amount of success without that feature. However, at this point, I don't think that is what makes users keep using the service.
Re: Snapchat usage triples among teens in the last year
#24Of course it did. What's more appealing, a socially acceptable method for your girlfriend to send nude photos of herself to your phone that are then removed (allegedly). OR Facebook, which is just reaching popularity with your parents...
No need for "allegedly". It is now a feature that Snapchats can be replayed. Users are able to pick one Snap per day that they want to replay.
Re: Snapchat usage triples among teens in the last year
#25Nevermind teens. I'm 42. I use it with my adult siblings, cousins and friends. It's a delightful way to stay in touch. Sometimes it's a picture of my breakfast, or the weather outside, or our pets, or whatever other amusing moment is going on in our day that we'd laugh about if we were together. The ephemeral nature of the pictures and the ability to scribble on them is just delightful fun.
I've found Wickr to be more secure and comes from a company that really seems to care about users. Where Snapchat is an illusion of ephemeral messaging, Wickr is the real deal.
The illusion is enough. It's the concept of ephemeral messaging that matters and set the context of how you use it.
Re: Snapchat usage triples among teens in the last year
#26it has all the benefits of social media (instant, low-friction communication) and none of the privacy concerns of faceboob, g+, etc. unless of course we discover one day that snapchat messages all live on in some secret db ...
Considering that all un-viewed Snapchat's have to be stored, there's no need for a secret db. I've heard a rumor that snaps are stored in memecache and they are running in to scaling pains with the amount of un-viewed pictures stored in memory.
I wonder if they drop unread pictures after a certain length of time? it would seem sensible and fit with the ephemeral nature of the mesdages
Re: Snapchat usage triples among teens in the last year
#27it has all the benefits of social media (instant, low-friction communication) and none of the privacy concerns of faceboob, g+, etc. unless of course we discover one day that snapchat messages all live on in some secret db ...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't a whole shit ton of Snapchat users passwords and the like stolen in 2013/2014?
usernames & pws have to be stored of course... but I though the whole appeal of snapchat was that messages would self-destruct? i.e. communication between users is not permanent? (except in the brains of the sender and recipient, i.e. just like human oral communication)
well assuming no wiretapping ;)