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30something here - It took me a while to "get" Snapchat, but in my opinion there is no better way to keep up with friends and family digitally than via Snapcha

30something here - It took me a while to "get" Snapchat, but in my opinion there is no better way to keep up with friends and family digitally than via Snapchat Stories. You can post pretty shamelessly the little things you're up to all day to your story, knowing it will be gone in 24 hours, keeping your feed really clean. Posting more than once or twice a day to Instagram/Facebook seems excessive, Twitter is a bit more of a firehose than a way to see what everyone is doing. It took me a bit to get used to the interface, but the goofiness of the entire service is so enjoyable, including all their filters and whatnot. I've noticed myself spending way more time on Snapchat than on other services as of late, even in my "old age for social media."

nostromo 10y ago
For all the talk of Snapchat being confusing, I think that Twitter is more confusing and hostile to new users than is Snapchat. And I'm also in my 30s. I've had a Twitter account for like eight years now and I'm still not sure how to have a conversation with someone. And trying to read a conversation with many replies confounds me every time.
- Pxtl 10y ago
  I agree the threading in Twitter is a train wreck. I like Twitter because it's great for super-local things, but it definitely fails at conversations even beyond the length limit.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  I still don't understand the draw of either of them, but obviously they're wildly popular for some reason, so bully for them. If I want to start a conversation with someone I call them up or E-mail them. I don't need to download some mobile app or to log in to some 3rd party service to do either of these. You can even send pictures through E-mail and delete them in 24 hours if you want. How in the world did humanity keep in touch with their family before Snapchat?
  - lizardking 10y ago
    Yes but the receiver of your email doesn't necessarily have to delete your email, which is the key distinction of what makes the service useful.
    - ryandrake 10y ago
      That's another thing I don't understand--how is "automatically deleting" a feature? Why would I care if the recipient eventually deletes something I send them? I've literally never given any thought to what people do with E-mails I sent them, since it doesn't affect me at all. They can print it and hang it on their wall or take a screenshot of it and use it as their desktop background for all I care.
      - rescripting 10y ago
        Flip it and look at it from the other side. Your inbox filling up with emails and attachments creates cognitive load; you have to decide what to do with all of them eventually. When you're consuming stories/snaps you see it, and it's gone. No overhead.
        gremy0 10y ago
        Additionally, if you needed something that did need persisted you would hopefully have the wit to send it on another service (e.g. email) so automatic filtering for all recipients.
      - tdkl 10y ago
        It also makes you check Snapchat more because you know that the stuff will be deleted - which results in using it more often and being addicted to it. Social media novelty machine 2.0.
    - haimez 10y ago
      I have to disagree. What makes Snapchat popular is their use of pictures. Turning the thesis of your point into a totally public, 160 character or less, textual format is effort. A lot of effort. Pictures are what they are. They're also extremely difficult to parse (no practical reason to retain your message, deletion is a cost effective decision), and they're the easiest thing in the world to make. Who wants to carefully word your tweets when your camera will do?
- maruhan2 10y ago
  Both are crap. For one, neither has a UI instruction area. I get that you want to create a UI that doesn't require instructions, but why does that prevent you from making an instruction regardless?
- batiudrami 10y ago
  It doesn't help that Twitter is unbelievably slow, and loaded with on-demand loading and other nonsense that would be much faster (and possibly lighter) if they just loaded replies with expandos. And then I'm following a conversation in a shitty popup above my feed, click "view more replies" and suddenly I'm on someone else's twitter profile and not my news feed? And I press "back" and I have to scroll back to where I was in my feed? Twitter's UX is horrendous.
  - sorenjan 10y ago
    I don't understand why these giant social media behemoths are so bad at web design which should be one of their core competences. Another example is Instagram hijacking middle click, so I can't open images in new tabs.
- kerbs 10y ago
  They are different kinds of confusing. Twitter is fundamentally confusing (for all the reasons mentioned - @'s, reply, RT, etc..) Snapshot's confusing part is only in the strange UI decisions of the app itself. Those I feel they could easily remedy.
  - ryanSrich 10y ago
    This exactly. While I think Twitter could improve their UI by leaps and bounds, Snapchat's UI is just incomprehensible. However I'm a strong believer in it being 100% intentional at this point.
    - ohstopitu 10y ago
      Just out or curiosity, what part of snapchat's UI did you find confusing?
      - kerbs 10y ago
        Mostly the navigational system is a mess - and feels of duct taped features without ever a desire to go in and clean it up. Some points from just using it now: - The strange lower left/lower right hamburger slide out menu things with odd icons. Right one leads to news, left one leads to snaps. - When you go to the lower, right hamburger thingy - to go "back" there is a camera (not a back chevron/arrow) at the top left. Go experience it - it is weird. - You can swipe down from the main camera view to get your profile. Took my 31 year old ass a year to discover that. - The view snap vs. message view is just... no. I know what it does and I still input wrong.
    - stubish 10y ago
      Twitters UI developed around how people used Twitter. hashtags, RT, @mention all evolved from the massive userbase. Twitter is a platypus.
    - kobayashi 10y ago
      I don't find it to be incomprehensible. I think it makes sense once you get using it, but it's definitely a non-native feel on any OS. I, too, absolutely agree that it's intentional. Keeps the grandmas from using it and once people figure it out there's a great connection to the app - people have invested in it and felt the reward of understanding its intricacies.
- goostavos 10y ago
  Glad it's not just me. Approaching 30, I've been using twitter for 2-3 years, yet I still have no idea how to view the tweets that are relevant to me, or why, suddenly, twitter insists on pushing updates to my phone when people who _aren't_ relevant to me 'like' something. I know there are 'lists' on twitter. I tried adding my friends to a 'friend' list so that I could actually see their tweets amongst the sea of noise. However, that seemed to accomplish absolutely nothing. The only time I see tweets relevant to me are when I happen to already be looking at twitter when they pop up. And since I only look at twitter when queueing in a line, I almost never see the things that would make twitter useful for me. But hey, PracticalDeveloper retweeted _something_ today, Twitter told me that. So... there ya go.
Swizec 10y ago
> Posting more than once or twice a day to Instagram/Facebook seems excessive I've been using Facebook all wrong ... How did you solve the problem of "Nothing interesting ever happens on Snapchat"? Maybe I have bad friends, but my feed is like a vast emptiness of nothing happening. Except for the 2 or 3 people who have decided that Snapchat is their new marketing channel. They post a lot and they post a lot of the same stuff over and over so I rarely watch. Basically, my problem is that I can smell Snapchat is great. But it soooo rarely gives me a reason to come back that I miss most of the things. Almost feels like I'd have to religiously "clean out my inbox" once a day. But it isn't interesting enough for that. What am I doing wrong? PS: I'm in my late 20's and I've had Snapchat installed ever since it launched but ... ugh. It just doesn't click.
- the_watcher 10y ago
  The part of Snapchat that is social is entirely dependent on having active friends on it. Part of what got me into the app daily was the branded stories. They are exactly the right length for me to get a short update on things that happened the day before or learn something new during my commutes. I find myself looking forward to when I have new ones to read.
- niftich 10y ago
  On Snapchat, your 'feed' contains only thumbnails, you have to consciously decide to consume it (per each user, although they recently changed this to an autoplay-all-others-after-first-click which somewhat undermines my point), so they pique your curiosity and tease you into consuming it. On Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. your feed is the sum of all content, so it's immediately apparent if it's empty or underwhelming.
the_watcher 10y ago
Yea, I noticed the same thing. At first, it seems weird and a little confusing, but rapidly becomes very intuitive, as it's actually designed for vertical mode. It didn't really click with me until my sister and her friends finished college and started hanging out around me more often, but it's become arguably my favorite social app
stormbeta 10y ago
>You can post pretty shamelessly the little things you're up to all day to your story, knowing it will be gone in 24 hours, keeping your feed really clean. This is the part I still don't get. Why would I want to constantly spam my friends with trivial photos of my daily life? Disappearing spam is still spam. I'm 28, nobody I know uses snapchat/instagram/whatever so I haven't actually used it. If it's something I actually want to share, I don't care if it's gone in 24 hours and it's dead simple to just message them directly.
- jaywunder 10y ago
  > Why would I want to constantly spam my friends with trivial photos of my daily life? Disappearing spam is still spam. I think the difference here is that because the photos disappear after 24 hours, the expectation for quality is lowered. Also the fact that the photos are trivial is part of the attraction. There aren't as many expectations on Snapchat as on Twitter. Sometimes it's just nice to see your friends' face, and Snapchat is good for that.
- prawn 10y ago
  I don't use SnapChat, but once you have children, your parents and siblings are interested in seeing the funny little day to day things your kids do. 5 seconds here and there of eating breakfast, getting dressed for the day, running around, etc. Twitter and Instagram don't really cover that use case well at all. I use private photos/videos on Instagram to share those things with my family, but it's very clunky and would feel like spamming to send more than 2-3 curated photos per day. I gather that with SnapChat there is far less curation.
  - rpgmaker 10y ago
    > I don't use SnapChat, but once you have children, your parents and siblings are interested in seeing the funny little day to day things your kids do. No they aren't interested. They are just too nice to tell you to stop spamming them.
    - pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
draw_down 10y ago
I don't like how you have to click and watch each person's thing individually. Twitter just puts everything in one timeline. Twitter also features text more heavily which I prefer.
- rjeli 10y ago
  with the new update, the next story is automatically played, so it's more like a feed
fideloper 10y ago
I couldnt justify view much battery that thing ate to keep our on my phone.
anamoulous 10y ago
Why are we content to let the pictures and videos we create disappear though?
- gre 10y ago
  That's the part I don't like about it. The president's car passes at a rally, do I take phone video or snapchat it or just enjoy the moment?
  - lisowski 10y ago
    A lot of people i know default, including me, to using snapchat as their main camera in most situations. You can download whatever you take a picture of through the app and choose not to post it at all. It has all the features i need from the camera plus some basic photo editing. Also the reverse isn't true: I cant take a picture through the normal camera then choose to post it to snapchat. this both locks you into using the Snapchat camera and ensures that most pics you see on snapchat are taken in the moment, which is very important to the app. btw I'm 23
- rescripting 10y ago
  Because you'd get overwhelmed if you saved every little moment of your day? Sometimes those moments are worth sharing with people because it brings you closer or continues a conversation. However, like with a conversation you don't need to remember the exact words sometime later for that conversation to have been worthwhile.
- burkaman 10y ago
  Because it's not about creating anything, it's just like conversation. You don't remember 99% of the conversations you've had in life either, and you're content not recording them.
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  you can save them
plaidturtle 10y ago
early 20 something here. My friends and I went "offline" and we are much closer and happier. Social media is overrated. I think we will look back at this time in the future like how we look back at cigarette smoking in the 50s. It has its place but its usefulness is limited. I don't question Snapchat's business potential, though. edit: also I find it funny (and pathetic) how industry analyst struggle to understand social media and what is the next big social media. They just don't get it.
- sbardle 10y ago
  I'm in the same boat. I was chatting to some Chinese business people yesterday. What we call social media, they call "self media". I think that is a better description of how most of us use social networks, i.e. to broadcast ourselves. But there is still underlying value in the connectness which social networks enable. For example my local community is using Facebook to bring everyone together to oppose a gravel development next to our local school. It's a great way of keeping everyone informed, quickly, and at no cost. Some people are really creative too, such as uploading videos of the proposed site using drones to show what we would lose. So I think to be useful, "self media" has to truly evolve into "social" media.
  - plaidturtle 10y ago
    I couldn't agree more with the points you raised. Social media services have their place and they can be a valuable tool. By the way, I'd never heard of the term "self media" but I think it is perfect. I'm going to start using it now.
  - tenkabuto 10y ago
    Please forgive me for generalizing, but from what stereotypes of Chinese culture that I've heard, I've been given the impression that the Chinese tend to be conservative with regards to outwardly expressing themselves. Given that this may be the case, is it not unsurprising that they would see a platform that is about visual expression and that focuses upon the creator of content, as being possibly too self-oriented? If this is the case, such a perception may act as a barrier to their ability to perceive that it is a platform that can be used for the creation and strengthening of interpersonal bonds (social media).
themagician 10y ago
There is nothing to "get". It's all the same. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat. People want a free way to broadcast to their friends. Someone invents a service that does that. Slowly ads take over. Now the stream needs to be "curated". It's no longer a timeline. It's no longer sensible. Now you can no longer reliably broadcast to your friends. People search for a new service that did what the old service used to do. They don't even realize that's what they are doing, but that's what they are doing. I've done this myself now what, a half dozen times? Every 2 years you have to do it again. It's the same damn model. It's all the same thing. Sometimes I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Does no one see this? Snapchat will rule until he ads take over. Your stories will slowly be interrupted by ads. Then your stories will fall out of time sync and you'll only get some updates or a "Featured Updates" or some other features that's really just a way to prioritize and guarantee ad delivery. And while this is happening someone will put out something new, that essentially does what Snapchat originally did in a slightly different format. Maybe square instead of portrait or GIF or Live Photo or whatever. But it's all the same thing. This game will continue forever. All people want is a way to broadcast into a stream of content, and view other people's content in a timeline. That's it. It works for a while until you get too big. Then you can't pay for it and you have to start inject ads and resorting the timeline until it's no longer a timeline or it's a timeline full of all this stuff no one ever wanted or asked for. When I was 15 I'd get home from school and run to my computer to check my favorite message board. I'd hit "New Posts" and see all the content from my friends. Cool new video game discussion, new video card benchmarks, some photos someone uploaded, some rant. Honestly, nothing has really changed in 15 years except the format of the content has been continuously updated to be technically (and culturally) relevant. But a post is still a post.
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  yeah no, snapchat was never a timeline and thats what was good about it you want to be connected with someone because you are friends but don't like the random shit they post but don't want to unfriend them? thats a problem for a different social network but not snapchat
  - themagician 10y ago
ocean3 10y ago
Kind of like WhatsApp except for the auto clearance.
billhendricksjr 10y ago
I get the appeal to an extent, but the interface is so bad I don't use it much. As an almost 40 something with an increasingly poor memory, I often lose track of the "conversation" because previous messages in the (non)thread have disappeared.
pmlnr 10y ago
> You can post pretty shamelessly the little things you're up to all day to your story, knowing it will be gone in 24 hours, keeping your feed really clean. This is sad. The whole thought; the whole idea that I can't read things back; to post apparently meaningless "stories" into the void. We have/had blogs for this, with the exceptions that those are not ephemeral. To read back you own stories, your own mistakes are invaluable lessons and not having the option to do this, because you depend on a service provider, where you have no control saddens me deeply. Get a WordPress and make posts disappear automatically after X hours - this is ~5 mins to set up and this way you can both keep and retrieve your stories from the public. Once this is done post to Snapchat from that blog; via webhooks, bots, whatever. Yes, right now, this is tedious and requires technical knowledge, but the goal is to own your data. But do not store the only copy your original content somewhere where you have no control at all. (See http://indiewebcamp.com/POSSE http://indiewebcamp.com/POSSE for the whole idea)
- jug 10y ago
  Sad? I think Snapchat manages to be successful because the messages are not meaningless just because they are later removed, but because they are as meaningful and easily relatable as normal conversations. If you aren't around to hear the latest gossip (Snapchat story), you will miss out. But it doesn't matter, because it's not about life or death. Not something even intended to be saved, catalogued, scrutinized. And for direct messages, they will go away as soon as they are read or seen. Just like in real life. They don't stick around, hovering around for retrieval months later. I think this reduces the cognitive load and makes it easier for people to share what they would be able to share in real life.
  - pmlnr 10y ago
    > If you aren't around to hear the latest gossip (Snapchat story), you will miss out. Who said gossips? "Stories" have and utterly different meaning to me. Journals stick around. Letters stick around. Notes stick around. They are important. We evolved to write, not just talk, and reading back who you have been 10 years ago, even if it's just a plain entry, can be surprisingly useful to maintain a healthy soul, especially in times when you think things are slipping away. Take away the option to remember, what are you left with? And no, I'm not exaggerating. No one scrolls back any more; yesterday deliberately out of interest, and I disagree with this from the bottom of my heart.
puranjay 10y ago
As a close to 30 something, I've never been able to get Snapchat and I've relegated it to my digital dustbin Maybe this comment will spur me to give it a shot
danmaz74 10y ago
> there is no better way to keep up with friends and family digitally than via Snapchat Stories Disclaimer: I'm one of those who don't "get" snapchat, so I'd like to get this explained by somebody who does. Do you use snapchat to just have fun with friends and family from time to time, and some other way to keep up with the important things in their lives - like talking in person, phone, facebook, whatever? Because I really don't understand how can you do the latter with such an ephemeral service...
alanwatts 10y ago
>You can post pretty shamelessly the little things you're up to all day to your story, knowing it will be gone in 24 hours, keeping your feed really clean. Snapchat is ephemeral and more private, like the spoken word, and unlike pretty much all other social media that I know of. It is an interesting concept, people feel more open to share certain things when they know it will fade away soon after rather than be on historical record .
kilroy123 10y ago
Also a thirty something. I've been using snapchat for a while now. I don't get all the talk of "getting it" or "figuring it out". What is so hard about the app? It has always made sense to me. Even before the stories.

nostromo 10y ago

For all the talk of Snapchat being confusing, I think that Twitter is more confusing and hostile to new users than is Snapchat. And I'm also in my 30s. I've had a Twitter account for like eight years now and I'm still not sure how to have a conversation with someone. And trying to read a conversation with many replies confounds me every time.

Pxtl 10y ago
I agree the threading in Twitter is a train wreck. I like Twitter because it's great for super-local things, but it definitely fails at conversations even beyond the length limit.
ryandrake 10y ago
I still don't understand the draw of either of them, but obviously they're wildly popular for some reason, so bully for them. If I want to start a conversation with someone I call them up or E-mail them. I don't need to download some mobile app or to log in to some 3rd party service to do either of these. You can even send pictures through E-mail and delete them in 24 hours if you want. How in the world did humanity keep in touch with their family before Snapchat?
- lizardking 10y ago
  Yes but the receiver of your email doesn't necessarily have to delete your email, which is the key distinction of what makes the service useful.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    That's another thing I don't understand--how is "automatically deleting" a feature? Why would I care if the recipient eventually deletes something I send them? I've literally never given any thought to what people do with E-mails I sent them, since it doesn't affect me at all. They can print it and hang it on their wall or take a screenshot of it and use it as their desktop background for all I care.
    - rescripting 10y ago
      Flip it and look at it from the other side. Your inbox filling up with emails and attachments creates cognitive load; you have to decide what to do with all of them eventually. When you're consuming stories/snaps you see it, and it's gone. No overhead.
      - gremy0 10y ago
        Additionally, if you needed something that did need persisted you would hopefully have the wit to send it on another service (e.g. email) so automatic filtering for all recipients.
    - tdkl 10y ago
      It also makes you check Snapchat more because you know that the stuff will be deleted - which results in using it more often and being addicted to it. Social media novelty machine 2.0.
  - haimez 10y ago
    I have to disagree. What makes Snapchat popular is their use of pictures. Turning the thesis of your point into a totally public, 160 character or less, textual format is effort. A lot of effort. Pictures are what they are. They're also extremely difficult to parse (no practical reason to retain your message, deletion is a cost effective decision), and they're the easiest thing in the world to make. Who wants to carefully word your tweets when your camera will do?
maruhan2 10y ago
Both are crap. For one, neither has a UI instruction area. I get that you want to create a UI that doesn't require instructions, but why does that prevent you from making an instruction regardless?
batiudrami 10y ago
It doesn't help that Twitter is unbelievably slow, and loaded with on-demand loading and other nonsense that would be much faster (and possibly lighter) if they just loaded replies with expandos. And then I'm following a conversation in a shitty popup above my feed, click "view more replies" and suddenly I'm on someone else's twitter profile and not my news feed? And I press "back" and I have to scroll back to where I was in my feed? Twitter's UX is horrendous.
- sorenjan 10y ago
  I don't understand why these giant social media behemoths are so bad at web design which should be one of their core competences. Another example is Instagram hijacking middle click, so I can't open images in new tabs.
kerbs 10y ago
They are different kinds of confusing. Twitter is fundamentally confusing (for all the reasons mentioned - @'s, reply, RT, etc..) Snapshot's confusing part is only in the strange UI decisions of the app itself. Those I feel they could easily remedy.
- ryanSrich 10y ago
  This exactly. While I think Twitter could improve their UI by leaps and bounds, Snapchat's UI is just incomprehensible. However I'm a strong believer in it being 100% intentional at this point.
  - ohstopitu 10y ago
    Just out or curiosity, what part of snapchat's UI did you find confusing?
    - kerbs 10y ago
      Mostly the navigational system is a mess - and feels of duct taped features without ever a desire to go in and clean it up. Some points from just using it now: - The strange lower left/lower right hamburger slide out menu things with odd icons. Right one leads to news, left one leads to snaps. - When you go to the lower, right hamburger thingy - to go "back" there is a camera (not a back chevron/arrow) at the top left. Go experience it - it is weird. - You can swipe down from the main camera view to get your profile. Took my 31 year old ass a year to discover that. - The view snap vs. message view is just... no. I know what it does and I still input wrong.
  - stubish 10y ago
    Twitters UI developed around how people used Twitter. hashtags, RT, @mention all evolved from the massive userbase. Twitter is a platypus.
  - kobayashi 10y ago
    I don't find it to be incomprehensible. I think it makes sense once you get using it, but it's definitely a non-native feel on any OS. I, too, absolutely agree that it's intentional. Keeps the grandmas from using it and once people figure it out there's a great connection to the app - people have invested in it and felt the reward of understanding its intricacies.
goostavos 10y ago
Glad it's not just me. Approaching 30, I've been using twitter for 2-3 years, yet I still have no idea how to view the tweets that are relevant to me, or why, suddenly, twitter insists on pushing updates to my phone when people who _aren't_ relevant to me 'like' something. I know there are 'lists' on twitter. I tried adding my friends to a 'friend' list so that I could actually see their tweets amongst the sea of noise. However, that seemed to accomplish absolutely nothing. The only time I see tweets relevant to me are when I happen to already be looking at twitter when they pop up. And since I only look at twitter when queueing in a line, I almost never see the things that would make twitter useful for me. But hey, PracticalDeveloper retweeted _something_ today, Twitter told me that. So... there ya go.

Swizec 10y ago

> Posting more than once or twice a day to Instagram/Facebook seems excessive I've been using Facebook all wrong ... How did you solve the problem of "Nothing interesting ever happens on Snapchat"? Maybe I have bad friends, but my feed is like a vast emptiness of nothing happening. Except for the 2 or 3 people who have decided that Snapchat is their new marketing channel. They post a lot and they post a lot of the same stuff over and over so I rarely watch. Basically, my problem is that I can smell Snapchat is great. But it soooo rarely gives me a reason to come back that I miss most of the things. Almost feels like I'd have to religiously "clean out my inbox" once a day. But it isn't interesting enough for that. What am I doing wrong? PS: I'm in my late 20's and I've had Snapchat installed ever since it launched but ... ugh. It just doesn't click.

the_watcher 10y ago
The part of Snapchat that is social is entirely dependent on having active friends on it. Part of what got me into the app daily was the branded stories. They are exactly the right length for me to get a short update on things that happened the day before or learn something new during my commutes. I find myself looking forward to when I have new ones to read.
niftich 10y ago
On Snapchat, your 'feed' contains only thumbnails, you have to consciously decide to consume it (per each user, although they recently changed this to an autoplay-all-others-after-first-click which somewhat undermines my point), so they pique your curiosity and tease you into consuming it. On Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. your feed is the sum of all content, so it's immediately apparent if it's empty or underwhelming.

the_watcher 10y ago

Yea, I noticed the same thing. At first, it seems weird and a little confusing, but rapidly becomes very intuitive, as it's actually designed for vertical mode. It didn't really click with me until my sister and her friends finished college and started hanging out around me more often, but it's become arguably my favorite social app

stormbeta 10y ago

>You can post pretty shamelessly the little things you're up to all day to your story, knowing it will be gone in 24 hours, keeping your feed really clean. This is the part I still don't get. Why would I want to constantly spam my friends with trivial photos of my daily life? Disappearing spam is still spam. I'm 28, nobody I know uses snapchat/instagram/whatever so I haven't actually used it. If it's something I actually want to share, I don't care if it's gone in 24 hours and it's dead simple to just message them directly.

jaywunder 10y ago
> Why would I want to constantly spam my friends with trivial photos of my daily life? Disappearing spam is still spam. I think the difference here is that because the photos disappear after 24 hours, the expectation for quality is lowered. Also the fact that the photos are trivial is part of the attraction. There aren't as many expectations on Snapchat as on Twitter. Sometimes it's just nice to see your friends' face, and Snapchat is good for that.
prawn 10y ago
I don't use SnapChat, but once you have children, your parents and siblings are interested in seeing the funny little day to day things your kids do. 5 seconds here and there of eating breakfast, getting dressed for the day, running around, etc. Twitter and Instagram don't really cover that use case well at all. I use private photos/videos on Instagram to share those things with my family, but it's very clunky and would feel like spamming to send more than 2-3 curated photos per day. I gather that with SnapChat there is far less curation.
- rpgmaker 10y ago
  > I don't use SnapChat, but once you have children, your parents and siblings are interested in seeing the funny little day to day things your kids do. No they aren't interested. They are just too nice to tell you to stop spamming them.
  - pg_is_a_butt 10y ago

draw_down 10y ago

I don't like how you have to click and watch each person's thing individually. Twitter just puts everything in one timeline. Twitter also features text more heavily which I prefer.

rjeli 10y ago
with the new update, the next story is automatically played, so it's more like a feed

fideloper 10y ago

I couldnt justify view much battery that thing ate to keep our on my phone.

anamoulous 10y ago

Why are we content to let the pictures and videos we create disappear though?

gre 10y ago
That's the part I don't like about it. The president's car passes at a rally, do I take phone video or snapchat it or just enjoy the moment?
- lisowski 10y ago
  A lot of people i know default, including me, to using snapchat as their main camera in most situations. You can download whatever you take a picture of through the app and choose not to post it at all. It has all the features i need from the camera plus some basic photo editing. Also the reverse isn't true: I cant take a picture through the normal camera then choose to post it to snapchat. this both locks you into using the Snapchat camera and ensures that most pics you see on snapchat are taken in the moment, which is very important to the app. btw I'm 23
rescripting 10y ago
Because you'd get overwhelmed if you saved every little moment of your day? Sometimes those moments are worth sharing with people because it brings you closer or continues a conversation. However, like with a conversation you don't need to remember the exact words sometime later for that conversation to have been worthwhile.
burkaman 10y ago
Because it's not about creating anything, it's just like conversation. You don't remember 99% of the conversations you've had in life either, and you're content not recording them.
cloudjacker 10y ago
you can save them

plaidturtle 10y ago

early 20 something here. My friends and I went "offline" and we are much closer and happier. Social media is overrated. I think we will look back at this time in the future like how we look back at cigarette smoking in the 50s. It has its place but its usefulness is limited. I don't question Snapchat's business potential, though. edit: also I find it funny (and pathetic) how industry analyst struggle to understand social media and what is the next big social media. They just don't get it.

sbardle 10y ago
I'm in the same boat. I was chatting to some Chinese business people yesterday. What we call social media, they call "self media". I think that is a better description of how most of us use social networks, i.e. to broadcast ourselves. But there is still underlying value in the connectness which social networks enable. For example my local community is using Facebook to bring everyone together to oppose a gravel development next to our local school. It's a great way of keeping everyone informed, quickly, and at no cost. Some people are really creative too, such as uploading videos of the proposed site using drones to show what we would lose. So I think to be useful, "self media" has to truly evolve into "social" media.
- plaidturtle 10y ago
  I couldn't agree more with the points you raised. Social media services have their place and they can be a valuable tool. By the way, I'd never heard of the term "self media" but I think it is perfect. I'm going to start using it now.
- tenkabuto 10y ago
  Please forgive me for generalizing, but from what stereotypes of Chinese culture that I've heard, I've been given the impression that the Chinese tend to be conservative with regards to outwardly expressing themselves. Given that this may be the case, is it not unsurprising that they would see a platform that is about visual expression and that focuses upon the creator of content, as being possibly too self-oriented? If this is the case, such a perception may act as a barrier to their ability to perceive that it is a platform that can be used for the creation and strengthening of interpersonal bonds (social media).

themagician 10y ago

There is nothing to "get". It's all the same. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat. People want a free way to broadcast to their friends. Someone invents a service that does that. Slowly ads take over. Now the stream needs to be "curated". It's no longer a timeline. It's no longer sensible. Now you can no longer reliably broadcast to your friends. People search for a new service that did what the old service used to do. They don't even realize that's what they are doing, but that's what they are doing. I've done this myself now what, a half dozen times? Every 2 years you have to do it again. It's the same damn model. It's all the same thing. Sometimes I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Does no one see this? Snapchat will rule until he ads take over. Your stories will slowly be interrupted by ads. Then your stories will fall out of time sync and you'll only get some updates or a "Featured Updates" or some other features that's really just a way to prioritize and guarantee ad delivery. And while this is happening someone will put out something new, that essentially does what Snapchat originally did in a slightly different format. Maybe square instead of portrait or GIF or Live Photo or whatever. But it's all the same thing. This game will continue forever. All people want is a way to broadcast into a stream of content, and view other people's content in a timeline. That's it. It works for a while until you get too big. Then you can't pay for it and you have to start inject ads and resorting the timeline until it's no longer a timeline or it's a timeline full of all this stuff no one ever wanted or asked for. When I was 15 I'd get home from school and run to my computer to check my favorite message board. I'd hit "New Posts" and see all the content from my friends. Cool new video game discussion, new video card benchmarks, some photos someone uploaded, some rant. Honestly, nothing has really changed in 15 years except the format of the content has been continuously updated to be technically (and culturally) relevant. But a post is still a post.

cloudjacker 10y ago
yeah no, snapchat was never a timeline and thats what was good about it you want to be connected with someone because you are friends but don't like the random shit they post but don't want to unfriend them? thats a problem for a different social network but not snapchat
- themagician 10y ago

ocean3 10y ago

Kind of like WhatsApp except for the auto clearance.

billhendricksjr 10y ago

I get the appeal to an extent, but the interface is so bad I don't use it much. As an almost 40 something with an increasingly poor memory, I often lose track of the "conversation" because previous messages in the (non)thread have disappeared.

pmlnr 10y ago

> You can post pretty shamelessly the little things you're up to all day to your story, knowing it will be gone in 24 hours, keeping your feed really clean. This is sad. The whole thought; the whole idea that I can't read things back; to post apparently meaningless "stories" into the void. We have/had blogs for this, with the exceptions that those are not ephemeral. To read back you own stories, your own mistakes are invaluable lessons and not having the option to do this, because you depend on a service provider, where you have no control saddens me deeply. Get a WordPress and make posts disappear automatically after X hours - this is ~5 mins to set up and this way you can both keep and retrieve your stories from the public. Once this is done post to Snapchat from that blog; via webhooks, bots, whatever. Yes, right now, this is tedious and requires technical knowledge, but the goal is to own your data. But do not store the only copy your original content somewhere where you have no control at all. (See http://indiewebcamp.com/POSSE http://indiewebcamp.com/POSSE for the whole idea)

jug 10y ago
Sad? I think Snapchat manages to be successful because the messages are not meaningless just because they are later removed, but because they are as meaningful and easily relatable as normal conversations. If you aren't around to hear the latest gossip (Snapchat story), you will miss out. But it doesn't matter, because it's not about life or death. Not something even intended to be saved, catalogued, scrutinized. And for direct messages, they will go away as soon as they are read or seen. Just like in real life. They don't stick around, hovering around for retrieval months later. I think this reduces the cognitive load and makes it easier for people to share what they would be able to share in real life.
- pmlnr 10y ago
  > If you aren't around to hear the latest gossip (Snapchat story), you will miss out. Who said gossips? "Stories" have and utterly different meaning to me. Journals stick around. Letters stick around. Notes stick around. They are important. We evolved to write, not just talk, and reading back who you have been 10 years ago, even if it's just a plain entry, can be surprisingly useful to maintain a healthy soul, especially in times when you think things are slipping away. Take away the option to remember, what are you left with? And no, I'm not exaggerating. No one scrolls back any more; yesterday deliberately out of interest, and I disagree with this from the bottom of my heart.

puranjay 10y ago

As a close to 30 something, I've never been able to get Snapchat and I've relegated it to my digital dustbin Maybe this comment will spur me to give it a shot

danmaz74 10y ago

> there is no better way to keep up with friends and family digitally than via Snapchat Stories Disclaimer: I'm one of those who don't "get" snapchat, so I'd like to get this explained by somebody who does. Do you use snapchat to just have fun with friends and family from time to time, and some other way to keep up with the important things in their lives - like talking in person, phone, facebook, whatever? Because I really don't understand how can you do the latter with such an ephemeral service...

alanwatts 10y ago

>You can post pretty shamelessly the little things you're up to all day to your story, knowing it will be gone in 24 hours, keeping your feed really clean. Snapchat is ephemeral and more private, like the spoken word, and unlike pretty much all other social media that I know of. It is an interesting concept, people feel more open to share certain things when they know it will fade away soon after rather than be on historical record .

kilroy123 10y ago

Also a thirty something. I've been using snapchat for a while now. I don't get all the talk of "getting it" or "figuring it out". What is so hard about the app? It has always made sense to me. Even before the stories.