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Comment by hammock | Hacker News Reader

Instagram is oriented towards consumption; when you open it, it takes you to your feed, and as you mention after posting or viewing stories it makes it easy to consume more.

Snapchat is oriented towards creation. When you open it, it starts on the camera.

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There's more to consumption and creation. Snapchat is ephemeral and fun - so you're somewhere and thinking "this would be a great snap" so it makes sense to open to the camera.

Instagram is so much more self-regulated and bound in crafting identity. You're right in that it's much more focused on consuming since the barrier to posting is much higher than snapping.

I'd agree with you but in the past year there's been a trend of making fake Instagram accounts (finsta's).

Snapchat is becoming a replacement for texting here as well. I've now overheard twice people say things like "I'll snap at ya" as they part directions and wave.

Absolutely. I give out my snapchat before I give out my phone number.

100%. It's going to be hard to kill Snapchat with a clone if you don't open on the camera. Which you can't really do without ruining the experience for existing users.

The only few times I used Facebook's "My day", I just posted my saved snaps. (and I only did it to see who'd open!)

I don't even use the regular camera app. It's always Snapchat. It's the best casual camera app out there.

Not entirely true, both IG/SC let users create/consume.

Not sure I would call it creation when going through 10 minutes of Stories from friends @ Snapchat...

hammock is referring to the orientation of the apps. The way they're designed make the creation vs. consumption balance vastly different experiences.

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