Ask HN: Was Snapchat the first app of its kind? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Was Snapchat the first app of its kind?

5 pointsXcelerate3 comments

One of my problems in developing apps is that for every idea I think of, I do a Google search and almost always find an app that already exists for such a thing. Sure, there's always the potential to create a better app that does the same thing, but at least for me, coming up with a novel ideal seems to be difficult.

So I am kind of surprised that Snapchat has taken off in the way that it has considering such an idea probably crossed my and many others' minds.

I can think of three possibilities: Snapchat was an original idea; Snapchat developed the concept of temporary photo sharing much better than any competitor; this current period in time is simply the point at which an app like this acquires popularity.

Thoughts?

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It sort of depends on what you think Snapchat does. If you think it's temporary photo sharing, who knows. If you think it's expiring content sharing, there's been imageboards and textboards forever. Given that Twitter "expires" content off your stream and off your own profile after 3200 tweets, Twitter could be considered that sort of model. You can probably imagine how you could make a custom Twitter client that works like Snapchat but uses Twitter as its platform. You might wonder if there'd be a market for that.

But all of these over-simplify and over-generalize what Snapchat does. The correct answer is #4, the one you couldn't envision.

If you were surprised, it means you don't understand why people use it, which means you're not thinking of it in terms of the problem it solves for them, but only as an idea with an arbitrary, coincidental implementation.

Snapchat solves a problem for a segment of users and solves it very well. It is both a solution and has a well-executed design. You need both, and then you also need marketing and network effects and traction and luck.

To better understand why Snapchat is the current communications darling, you might look into danah boyd's research into how teens use social networks, or this recent anecdotal exploration of one US 10th grader: https://medium.com/product-design/d8d4f2300cf3

Don't start with an idea, start with a problem that you have evidence exists, then develop a solution.

Great explanation.

> means you don't understand why people use it

I think this is a problem for app developers in general. I can't predict what a typical app user will really like because I'm not one of them. It's kind of funny because even though I really love developing new technology, I find that I don't use any of the really popular things (Twitter, Instagram, etc.). So instead I have to imagine "if I was a normal person... what problem would I be trying to solve?" A lot of times I guess wrong. (I remember how happy I was when I developed an icon editor when I was young. The feedback I got was very positive but I got very little of it.) Solving my own technical problems isn't going to get me any business at all.

I should be clear: I've never used Snapchat, and I am not a 10th grader, and the world current 10th graders live in is not the world I grew up in.

But I understand the problem it solves. I'm not "imagining" it's a viable solution for a hypothetical problem: I've read the research that explains the problem teens have and their mental models of their social interactions and can see where Snapchat fits in appropriately.

That's what research is for. It's why Steve Blank says to get out of the building. You don't have to imagine. Leave your office, get away from your laptop, spend time in other places and discover problems that people have, and then see if there's a market for a solution.

Incidentally, the work a founder does in developing a product through customer development is most of the same work a product designer, user experience designer, or interaction designer has to do. If your product already makes sense, it saves us a lot of time and effort.

This other link from HN earlier today, about what Amy Hoy taught this person about starting a business, which sums it up pretty well: http://justinjackson.ca/amy-hoy/

Good luck with your apps in the future.

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