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.