Why I love Snapchat
justinkan.com
justinkan.com
Virtually all the comments are about how Snapchat confuses them and that there must be something seriously wrong with it. And yet the app is immensely popular. If you're one of those people, then Snapchat is not really made for you.
You might be able to understand why Snapchat is a beloved app by reading a report about what the millennials are up to these days but I encourage anyone dealing with this confusion to make an effort to talk to people outside of your normal social circles once in a while. This kind of empathy with others will make you much more effective when you're creating for people who are not like you.
a) I don't understand it or see the appeal, then why do other people like it? b) I don't like it or see the appeal, but others do. Cool.
But much like acid, I feel like I wouldn't be able to engage with it everyday without weird things happening to my brain. I totally support people who use it, just personally I'm content with mostly experiencing it vicariously through other people.
It happens on a much lesser level with food, music, movies, etc - the reaction from a non-fan to a 15 year-old girl's declaration that she loves One Direction is not "ok I see why someone could like this music and why this tribal affiliation is both socially useful to a teenager" but rather
Snapchat is the technology version of One Direction for a lot of adults. But also remember many adults couldn't understand why teenage girls went crazy for The Beatles in 1964 either.
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'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
Snapchat on the other hand, most people won't know about it. However, I bet its drastically going to change in two years. Whatsapp is basically an SMS replacement - it lacks media rich features and as mobile internet speeds improve in India, people will gravitate towards apps such as Snapchat.
Empathy has nothing to do with it, most people who use computers are stupid or if they are smart have irrational traits. Our ancient primate brain is easily fooled.
Apple's ipod was not technically superior to competing MP3 players. Steve jobs was not a genius, he was just taking advantage of the fact that people are stupid and into fashion.
The same thing applies for most things, take the videogame industry. Anyone who knows how a computer works and is not irrational knows DRM and locked down games are bad for games, the enlightened rational minority is outnumbered by the irrational majority. So corruption, appearances, crap products and the superficial rule.
Also, most of the things that you've said are entirely subjective. You're stating your own opinions as fact, which most of us (me) would say is something a stupid, unempathetic person would do.
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 you're saying that whatever you have to say is important enough to put up on everybody's news feed and stay around forever. When you use Snapchat you're saying that whatever you have to say is worth a few seconds of your friends' time and then disappears forever.
It also plays against the slow realization by Millennials as they've grown up that everything they do on the Internet is permanent and they need to be careful about it. Snapchat let's you do whatever stupid shit you want as long as you trust the recipients to not save it and share 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.
I feel like the people I talk to, I already talk to. Internet people are internet people - and I'd like them to approach my missives at their own pace. Not have an inspector-gadget like timer associated with the posts.
Does it also play on that basic human condition of not wanting to see options go away, so you frantically click through your friend's stories for fear of missing anything? I could imagine how that would get users hooked, but I wouldn't consider it a good thing.
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, definitely not snapchat's market.
There’s no public view count, follower count, likes count, or any other social
dick-measuring contest. You can just put whatever you’re doing on Snapchat; if
people don’t like it, who gives a fuck, you’ll never know. There’s no
expectation of balling out 24/7.
Consequently, on Snapchat I’ll post to my daily Story almost twice as much as
I’ll post to Twitter and Facebook combined to reach only a fraction of the
number of people. 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.
If you are someone who does not find the appeal in low-stakes interactions, then it's quite understandable that Snapchat may not appeal to you.
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.
The Japanese cherry blossoms are a bittersweet moment during the spring. People go flower-watching (花見) to admire the beauty and it is a happy time. But it is also a sad time, because it is only for a fleeting moment before the time has gone and another year must pass before you can see them bloom.
What makes them so special is that they do no last forever. If the cherry blossoms were in bloom year-round, they would not be any less beautiful - but I do not think they would see as much popularity. They would become commonplace and ignored.
Not everything needs to live on forever - and some things would "suffer" if they did.
>This kind of empathy with others will make you much more effective when you're creating for people who are not like you.
What you are describing is the action of gaining knowledge of other's likes/dislikes. This can be done entirely robotically i.e. completely without emotion. Knowing about others is only a part of empathy. The other part is actually exercising this emotion in your actions, choices, and interactions with other people.
I don't think not understanding snapchat (and not wanting to understand snapchat) is a display of a lack of empathy. There are many things that each of us choose not to spend time learning about. That is just a basic facet of life.
And, I find it extremely disingenuous to start blaming people of being "bad human beings" because they do not care to entertain themselves with a currently popular social application. Like really? Is this what we have lowered our discussion standards too?
This jump to appealing to some sort of moral high-ground to establish your point is logically fallacious at best. Especially when morality/ethics plays zero part in people's personal views/choices in regards to a topic e.g. this topic.
>make an effort to talk to people outside of your normal social circles once in a while.
You do realize that the majority of Snapchat's users are most likely using it to participate in THEIR social circles, right? To each their own. It's perfectly fine to NOT be in some social circles.
I am seriously amused that the top comment is an appeal to ethical standards in regards to people's personal opinions about an app. Very amused! :D
I also never said that the comment was saying that "everyone needs to use snapchat".
Maybe you should either address specific points made in someone else's comment or avoid being outright rude in an otherwise intellectual and civil discussion? Just a thought.
EDIT: I also would expect discussions on a site like this to not devolve to false dichotomies of either total agreement or total disagreement with someone else's position (comment).
If you read my comment carefully you will easily discern that my focus is on the lack of necessity for bringing an appeal to "empathy" into the discussion.
I don't see anyone appealing to a moral high-ground. You're the only one talking about ethics.
Let me distill the OP's comment for you: 1) A lot people seem to be complaining about Snapchat being confusing and saying there's something wrong with it, etc. 2) Yet Snapchat is extremely popular with certain groups. 3) If you want to understand why it's popular, try to understand the groups that are using it. 4) In general, that type of empathy (or the ability to understand and share another person's experiences and emotions) can be useful in helping you create things for other people who are dissimilar to you.
You're the only one talking about people being bad or good in relation to their understanding of Snapchat... unless comments have been edited or something.
And mgalka isn't saying you said it was stupid. He was paraphrasing the original argument, because he thought you didn't understand it. Bleh, this type of bickering is pointless, hence my troll suspicion.
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.
Same for almost the entirety of apple products.
What gives?
AFAIK, every feature is explained on Snapchat's website. Also when new features are introduced, they've usually explained in the release notes on how to use them—like when lenses were first added.
Thinking of how our parents or grandparents might be able to use a computer just fine but they can't find their way around a flat mobile UI -- Is the Snapchat UI just a new paradigm that we old people don't get? 10 years from now, will this kind of UI design be pervasive?
What if UIs are evolving and we're being left behind?
Then I asked a 16-year-old niece if she finds it intuitive, and, no, she was as baffled by it as I am. So it's just bad UX. I've spent the three minutes acquainting myself with it since, so now I can use it fine, but yeah, it's definitely bad UX.
I personally like the UI/UX, and think it's advanced. I'm incorporating some of its elements in my own work. I for one am pretty tired of lists, lists, and more lists. I've read somewhere that the UI/UX was built in a 'Japanese style'. I dont know if that's true but it's interesting.
I think where there's room for improvement is just introducing the features and explaining how the unconventional navigation works.
Consider that it may be intentional, a way for Snapchat to avoid the Eternal September issue where parents and older people signup as part of a second or third wave of users.
I watched my younger group of brothers and relatives move from Facebook and then Instagram as parents, uncles, aunts, teachers, grandparents etc. signed up to each service.
They're hoping they won't have to move on from Snapchat and can remain more candid there.
For example, aside from the traditional way of adding a friend, you can point your camera, in Snapchat, at someone else's phone displaying the profile screen, and it will automatically add them as a friend. Only one other person I've met has known about it before I told them (and they're the ones that told me).
The UI also is just generally clumsy or buggy. Another example, just some of my gripes about the part of the app where you can text chat with people:
You get a push notification that "X is typing" whenever someone begins writing a message to you, even if they don't send a message. Every few days I get one of these notifications when a friend accidentally began typing to me instead of someone else.
They've replaced the "send" button on the keyboard with a button that livestreams your camera to that person. Quite a surprise the first time you're chatting and you're only in your underwear.
You have to hold one of your fingers on the screen the entire time you're video chatting. And you change between the front and back-facing camera based on where on the screen you are holding your finger.
I actually really like Snapchat, it's the only social network/app I use regularly, but damn does the app suck.
It seemed like it was done originally by somebody with bad UX skills - or else it was intentional to piss off older people and let the kids have their own thing..?!
Once you know how to use it though, it's pretty cool.
Swiping to move between screens (there's only 4 main views) is very fluid and easy to navigate.
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 media presences with key emojis, as if a celebrity culture disseminated via Snapchat is different than any other celebrity culture. I also don't really understand how you can write an article saying Snapchat is unmanufactured and not a "social dick-measuring contest" while using DJ Khaled as your main example (and ending with an "add me on Snapchat!").
But this article is titled Why I love Snapchat, and not Why Snapchat is the best. And honestly -- I know a lot of people who love Snapchat. And that's totally cool! Software that creates joy is almost always a net positive thing, and even if I don't really dig Snapchat I'm glad that other people do.
It's okay to love software, even if its flawed or not the ~~ future of media ~~ or whatever. I loved Glitch, a game that hopefully Stewart Butterfield will revive at some point. I love Reddit, even though I find a substantial and growing chunk of its userbase/content to be somewhere between abysmal and appalling.
(Just please, stop with the key emojis.)
I think celeb culture's existence on Snapchat and other platforms doesn't have much to do with what I wrote about how Snapchat works.
You get feedback in the form of private snaps and messages, not public #s of comments and likes. So, it isn't a public competition. This is true for celebs and for myself and for every day users.
But it still feels nice to get positive feedback (like someone telling you offline "I like your snaps", or someone snapping you a response to your Story). Getting more friends on it increases private, positive feedback.
I don't want everything I do blasted on social media - I want to enjoy the moments I spend with friends. Snapchat is the opposite of living in the moment, and that is my beef with it.
Isn't this common with every social media app, relatively? It's the same with cameras, writing down notes, and many other things. You need to use it wisely and have a good focus on the right time and place, and amount of time too.
I use Snapchat a fair bit friends, but almost always not when we're together. It's a low-friction and cheap way of just keeping in contact. Like when you're walking down a street, see something cool and point it out to a friend. Snapchat lets you do that when you're not actually together.
When I'm with friends and want to show something to other friends, I'll make a quick photo or video, and then let it be. Again, you'll have some friends who are on their phones too much, but that's not a Snapchat app problem, or a physical camera problem, it's a user problem.
I used it only for a year or so, but my impression is/was that Snapchat is a way of trying to show other people how in-the-moment you are, even though you have to take the little bit of time away from that moment to broadcast it.
If you're alone at a bar, but you take some snaps and send them to your friends and they reply while you're still there, it's sorta-kinda-almost like you're hanging out there with them.
Or, for a more powerful example: sending snaps of random things over the course of your day to someone you're in a long-distance relationship with. It's the minute-at-a-time version of exactly what Justin.TV could have done: let you "hang out" with your SO while in another country by being pushed a feed from the camera on their shoulder. (While presumably also being able to text or talk on the phone with them as you like, as well.)
The overwhelming impression I get from your post is either 1) you don't understand Snapchat, or 2) you understand Snapchat, but you're too embroiled in the "high culture" of Hacker News to be able to appreciate both forms of communication.
I appreciate Hacker News because it is a place where I can read and write paragraphs. I appreciate Snapchat for other reasons. That's where I think many people get lost:
You don't always have to be serious. At the same time, you don't always have to bless up.
I think being able to understand both worlds is key. Major key.
A healthy dose of criticism is not only a contribution, but a form of flattery in a way. (Because your detractor thought your comment was worthy of critique, or else they would have ignored it)
At any rate, the way I read Justin's comment was that he was agreeing with you, but I could be wrong.
But if you're right—that Justin was agreeing with me—his comment doesn't counter mine or add to it. It just reiterates something I already said.
I'm not an incredibly social person and I'd never have more than a hundred or so Facebook friends, but I'd always feel a little uneasy whenever I saw how many friends another person had -- you can't help but compare them with yourself. On Snapchat I have no idea how many friends the average user has. It's just a window into the lives of the people you care about (as banal or entertaining as they are).
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.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zXWpjhoewE for a compilation.
I'm a user of Facebook, but I really don't like Facebook's newsfeed. I find it to be a time sink that has a lot of advertisements and some amount of cultivation is required if you don't want to be bogged down with every little thing your friends do. So basically I only use Facebook for messaging people whose phone number I don't have, and for event tracking, as a lot of people in my social group use Facebook to make events, which I think is great.
But that leaves a small hole in my social media. I enjoy cyber stalking my friends because I like being aware of what people are doing with their lives. Snapchat (but specifically Snapchat stories) fills that need fairly perfectly. Just once or twice a day I can skim through my stories for a few minutes just to see what people have been up to that day.
I like it better than Twitter because there is too much promotion and general posting of stuff I'm not interested in (like the Facebook newsfeed) and I like it better than Instagram (for this purpose) because most users of Instagram seem to want to only put their best / most interesting / etc. photos on there, which isn't exactly what I'm looking for.
http://www.windowscentral.com/how-you-cant-get-snapchat-wind...
Couple interesting tweets from his profile.
https://twitter.com/RudyHuyn/status/685190102285332480
https://twitter.com/RudyHuyn/status/685190708215418880
That's how the game is played, if one doesn't like it then don't use Snapchat.
But most the time, I post interesting-but-uncurated little snippets throughout the day that I think are funny or odd, and I usually get a few random comments from friends and family, and its generally fun, frictionless and competition-less way to share without all the 'like' or friend quantifiers. Occasionally a post gets upgraded to twitter for broadcast.
I also initially enjoyed the city stories, where random regular people from, say, Doha or Abu Dhabi or Kuala Lumpur post videos of their daily lives. Cool to see how people live on the other side of the world. Eventually got bored with it, but cool concept.
I do get the point of the psychological barrier and the problem of broadcasting likes, retweets, comments etc. I think some people will say "what if no one responds" then why would I put this out there, and stop them from putting out something that might be interesting.
With Twitter and Instagram's linear feed, I have to seasonally follow/unfollow people (whom i care about and want to follow!) based on the current sport season, they just had a baby, or whatever and they decide to binge post. Not just once, but for a literal season.
Now, I use them all, and they all have strengths and weaknesses, but Snapchat is the only one i really love to use. Its not a polar argument.
In snapchat, I can quickly tap thru or totally ignore (never see, never spend a second messing with it) if I so choose.
I want to see posts from everyone, but one person (or a handful of people) can seriously damage the experience on Instagram type feed based platforms.
I suggest playing around with snapchat to understand why it's a fundamentally different approach to interacting. Follow some active users like DJ Khaled.
Regarding how Snapchat handles a large number of followers, I don't really know how to address. I follow 50 people, maybe 10 post daily.
I used Snapchat with a very small number of good friends fairly heavily for about a month. Things we shared:
- what we ate - walking to work - on the bus/train - waiting in line - nothing at all - drawing on pictures of people - example: a friend is watching ESPN talk about the owner of the 49ers, Jed York, and drew a dunce cap on his head
I think we averaged 10 messages a day each.
Basically, for us, Snapchat was for sharing photos too stupid or personal for Facebook or Instagram.
The stickiness eventually faded. We got tired of seeing the same food, the same office, the same bus every day. Contrary to how we might represent ourselves on Facebook (SUPER AWESOME!!!!), Snapchat showed each other how utterly mundane our lives were. Of the original group of ~5 people, there's maybe one left.
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.
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.
You hit the nail on the head with Snapchat. You get to see something someone wanted to share. Maybe you shoot them an "lol" over text or maybe you bring it up next time you see them. It's wholly unobtrusive and each moment has equal value.
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)
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 Snapchat requires you to select who you want to see your snap. There's no facility to push into everyone's feed. I'm not sending it to my "Friends" or my "Family" without consideration.
You aren't going to click 200 people, or 150, or 50. You're going to think "These five people really love hiking." Or "My cousins were talking about adopting a husky." Or "Last time I burned bacon like this was with John and Jane."
Saying "you can only have 150 friends" wasn't the key to a more personal experience. It just meant there was a hard limit on how many people could spam you. The key for me is the tiny marginal cost of sending something to N+1 people, so instead you choose more thoughtfully.
Facebook and Twitter inundate me with reshared content from third parties that I mostly have no interest in. Snapchat in contrast is content created by people I know, and they choose to send it to me specifically.
It might be as mundane as breakfast, or a pet doing something funny, or new bedroom curtains, but it's still an update about the life of a friend. Facebook might have a rant about how awful the day at work was which is boring to read. We've all got jobs. Or a reshare of 43 things every women in her 30s hates about Thursday afternoon. Snapchat might have a picture of someone's lunch knocked onto the floor. You think "hah that sucks" and it's gone.
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.
Hmm...I guess you guys are talking about somewhat different things - a public viewer count that you can compare to other people vs a private one that only you can see. It still feels a bit contradictory to me though. I would imagine that being able to see how many people view something you post and who they are still rewards the same type of attention-seeking, dick-measuring content - just to a somewhat lesser degree.
I agree with the other commenters, that a reply to your snap (directly through the app, or in person at a later time) is pretty nice. One of my favorite little things, though I don't know if it's common with other users, is my friends will often have a sort of open "conversation" indirectly with each other through their stories.
Last weekend, a friend of mine posted snaps of her working on some ambient music to her story. So I posted some snaps of me playing a synth. She posted snaps of her playing her synth. Another friend posted to his story him playing his piano, then another friend just playing the Mario Bros theme on a keyboard. And this continued for a few hours until my "Stories" section was just filled with friends playing music.
This is actually one of the reasons I like it- it is deliberately counter to a lot of social media. There is no like button, no retweet count, no permanent record- just ephemeral little moments you share with friends, and occasionally they'll mention that they liked one of your snaps to you.
To me, it feels like social media in a way it can actually enhance our lives- it encourages you to share moments but once they are over, it's gone, and there are no statistics that you can use to obsess over whether you are fulfilling your social media potential.
It just feels (to me at least), that this is a problem. Granted before what we consider to be the electronic age of social media, this kind of validation existed -- for example, getting a phone call from a friend would give one a similar level of validation - I have a friend! He/She likes me enough to call me!" - it wasn't something someone expected to happen every ten minutes and it wasn't something that required you to do anything.t
Now that we are all connected, we post, we expect validation that someone has read the nugget we posted. Yay! Friends!
I dunno, just strikes me as something to be leery of..
Now if I was to have a discussion about some technical issue or whatever, that would be creating content, but Snapchat is hardly the ideal, or indeed a feasible platform for that.
Content you don't want to watch or don't understand is still content if other people want to look at it.
Having no # total of followers publicly available and the usual metrics encourages this too.
That makes me want to sign up right away!
In addition, you can do real time face-to-face video chat, just like face-time. They've also been pretty smart about the implementation of it. If 2 people are snap messaging (not video, just text) and they both have the chat window open, the snapchat camera icon would start glowing blue, signifying that you can initiate a face-to-face video chat with the person.
As someone who initially thought Snapchat was stupid, and doesn't typically engage in social media, I get that someone could dislike it or not see the point. For me, Snapchat fits a niche in communication I didn't know I had.
I had just barely started to accept Twitter's presence in the world and now this.
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.
OT: That's... an interesting take.