Probably I am alone here but I think that Snapchat is the biggest innovation in the social space since Facebook and not just because of it's ephemeral nature. Let me elaborate and give my view why I think Snapchat is great and one of my most used apps.
- To start, Snapchat changed my communication behavior heavily. Before Snapchat people used any kind of messengers when they had a clear intent to start an interaction with another person. With Snapchat you just send something. You do not want to start a conversation, often you just share what you do right now, how you feel and very often it's so close to what you are and not some polished something you would like to be. You share emotions in forms of pics also on Instagram and Facebook but this is different since the emotions you present there are highly curated, see below for more.
- There are no 'likes' and this is wonderful. The existence of likes sets us under pressure. If we post something on Facebook and do not get a single like it's embarrassing and leads to postings which are only of outstanding nature painting a distorted picture of our life. Facebook is anything but not reflecting reality.
- Sending and selecting a few contacts is so fast and I do not know one single app which has a slicker process. This again leads to so much more honest and personal messaging. Since I target on other platform many more people I have to take care about my postings. On Snapchat I can quickly select a bunch of people and leave those out who might be bored by a single snap.
- The process of taking a picture is different than with the stock camera of a phone. You take a pic which is NOT saved—usually it's immediately saved and if you do not like it you have to go the the gallery, delete it and confirm again that you want to delete it. This is very annoying if you take selfies. Snapchat turned this around and once you find the right shot you can send and/or save it. Small thing but so convenient.
- Features like slide-in filters, painting on the pic, amazing video calling are just nice amenities but again show that Snapchat's interface is just great and miles beyond other cluttered UIs.
- One feature which I want to mention is putting text on pictures, no rocket science but again sometimes so funny and shows similarities to those meme generators.
- Finally, the ephemeral thing is not the key feature but it's the brand and the DNA of Snapchat, everybody knows that there's no privacy, people can screenshot the snaps and share it, period. But it's about being oneself and understanding that the pictures are just 'throw-away products', no shiny thing kept forever. This again leads to a very honest snaps. Snapchat is not about looking good.
I encourage everyone who doesn't 'understand' Snapchat's success to try it, it strengthens the relationship to close contacts and friends much more than other 'social app'.