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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 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.

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.

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

Can you tell who has read or seen your posts? I guess I mean, when I talk to someone I know they are there. I don't want to feel pressured to look at the feed every day on the chance of missing something.

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.

You can tell which one of your friends has viewed your posts on your personal timeline or directly

Except that you are not - if I talk with somebody for real, at least I know somebody listened to what I say (OK, or at least pretended to listen). Seems as if I could go through the effort to snap something and it would disappear before anybody sees it.

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.

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, definitely not snapchat's market.

The reason snaps disappear is to enable one of the key effects of Snapchat which is low-stakes social interaction. Users feel they can be more relaxed in their interactions when they cannot be recalled later. To quote the article:

    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.

Many people do feel social pressure to be "cool", to perform to the perceived expectations of the groups they belong too. Given that, many people clamor for "lower stakes" interactions. While the same "lowering of the stakes" could happen at a social level, and I believe that is something that's happening slowly over the long term, a much faster route is to use a tool that enforces lower stakes, such as Snapchat.

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.

No, Facebook Messenger is like talking to someone with a tape recorder sitting between you.

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.

There's a certain beauty behind transient moments. It follows a separate line of thinking than that of people used to keeping digital archives of their lives.

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.

If you have a face-to-face conversation with a friend (assuming no eavesdropping devices are around) everything you say "self destructs". You'll feel freer to say certain things knowing that they will only persist in your friend's memory.

People get sidetracked from actually enjoying their friends' virtual company when also given the role of curating/polishing an online presence. Not worrying about the impression your profile makes is freeing.

life is meaningless. everything is meaningless.

It's not really intended for things you'd want to persist forever. If you'd like to, you can easily save the image or video. The idea is sharing your current experience with others in a way that you cannot really on Facebook or Instagram.

No more fleeting then an unrecorded exchange between two people.