10 ms·

Thirty something here. The stories aren't spam since they don't trigger notifications and you have to intentionally click on them to watch. When i'm not feeling

Thirty something here. The stories aren't spam since they don't trigger notifications and you have to intentionally click on them to watch. When i'm not feeling social I ignore snapchat, when i am, i know i can check in and see what my friends are doing.

brianwawok 10y ago
Why don't you ask them if you want to know what they are doing? I still don't get it.
- andresgottlieb 10y ago
  One word: friction.
- ChazDazzle 10y ago
  pictures and videos are more expressive than words
  - adrianratnapala 10y ago
    I didn't understand that statement, could you perhaps draw an explanatory diagram for me?
- cik2e 10y ago
  Thank you, Gilfoyle. I'm with you though.
- Sacho 10y ago
  I am amazed this sentiment keeps popping up over and over in this thread. Asking them is exactly the kind of synchronous, flow-breaking communication that programmers should be keenly aware of. People are naturally discovering that polling is worse than event driven notifications, and it's great to watch. There are plenty of arguments to make in favor of synchronous, face-to-face etc communication, about the loss of privacy when you broadcast everything you do, about the lack of personal engagement in this kind of communication, and so on. I can see making a judgement call whether to participate in this kind of communication, because there are plenty of drawbacks and negatives. However, it's obvious to me why people are willingly switching some(most?) of their communication to it. Just as we learned to use asynchronous I/O in place of synchronous, we started using multicast messages and event-driven notifications instead of polling over all your friend-handles "hey what did you do today". It seems like a natural progression to me.
  - danso 10y ago
    Great way to put it so that a technologist can understand. A lot of my best friends came from passive serendipitous interactions on FB that built into the kind strong and familiar enough to turn into "synchronous" interactions.
- vidarh 10y ago
  I think this may be largely an introvert vs. extrovert type distinction. I'm with you - I don't see the point. Twitter is the social network I've come closest to enjoy using, because of the loose expectations around it. I share stuff I find interesting on occasion, but very rarely anything about myself. In terms of "social" I see it as a mostly-write type environment - I don't sweat that I ignore 90% of what the people I follow write, and I mostly follow people for updates/news/commentary rather than social contact. But then I'm very aware that I'm very introverted. I like social contact in moderation, but it exhausts me, and every now and again I just get "social burnout" and turns into a total recluse for months on end. What doesn't work for me about Snapchat is primarily that it is video. Video to me is "high touch" - it takes much more energy than writing a tweet, and similarly watching a video requires magnitudes more attention than rapidly scanning past a bunch of tweets.
stormbeta 10y ago
I'm still lost. Maybe I just have radically different friends than everyone else here, but if I really have some pressing need to know what they're doing on a given day, I just ask them. Nobody cares about the day-to-day minutia, and if it was interesting, stuff like FB or regular messages work just fine. Like most social media apps, this just feels like a solution in search of a problem (except for sexting).
- burkaman 10y ago
  I think "solution in search of a problem" is a fine description, and not really a bad thing. Nobody says "I want a photo sharing app" and downloads Snapchat after doing some research. You get it because your friends have it, and you keep using it because you enjoy it. If your friends aren't using it, then you won't like it because there won't be anything to do.
- trevor-e 10y ago
  Not trying to be mean here, but I'm having quite the time watching you try to grok Snapchat. To me your argument reads like "why would I send someone a text message when I can call them?" when text messaging was first becoming popular. When you have more than a handful of friends that you're trying to keep in touch with, are you really going to ask every single one of them what they're up to each day? Snapchat solves this in a fun way.
  - justinpombrio 10y ago
    > When you have more than a handful of friends that you're trying to keep in touch with, are you really going to ask every single one of them what they're up to each day? Good god why would I care? I imagine this difference in attitude accounts for some of the confusion over snapchat's purpose.
    - trevor-e 10y ago
      > Good god why would I care? If you're not interested in what your friends are up to, why are you friends with them in the first place? Maybe they're really just acquaintances? Like you said, maybe it's a difference in attitude. Still, I recommend you giving it a shot to get a better idea of what it is. I also thought it was dumb at first.
adrianratnapala 10y ago
Ahh, so maybe the appeal is its non-spamness? In that it doesn't clog up any kind of inbox?
greggman 10y ago
They are spam if I have to deal with them at all. Even skipping over things I'm not interested in is spam to me. It got so bad on FB I installed FB Purity. I have about 15 filters in there. Two to filter out one of my friend's posts who posts a pictures of every single meal every single day. I don't want to unfriend him nor unfollow him but his meal posts are spam to me. How would this be any different in Snapchat? I'd still have all these meal spam pics to skip over.
- majewsky 10y ago
  Exactly. The "Fear Of Missing Something Important" explained in https://medium.com/swlh/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3#.ksi6hj5na https://medium.com/swlh/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds...
puranjay 10y ago
But...why? Why do you want people to see what you ate? Is everyone here living more interesting lives than me? I mean, my stories will be just the same old lunch and dinner pics, working before a computer, commuting to and from work...
- 0x6c6f6c 10y ago
  Some people are. Or not everybody shares their everyday activities, just when something worth sharing actually occurs
- smileysteve 10y ago
  > Why do you want people to see what you ate? Oh man. So at the after party of a recent wedding, the Bride had to post a picture of her nachos.
- cableshaft 10y ago
  If you make something interesting, I might want to get the recipe off you and try it myself, or ask if you'd like to make it for the next social thing I host. If you go somewhere I haven't been to (or it's a place I go to often but never tried what you got) and it looks like something I'd be interested in trying, I'll ask about your experience and maybe go sometime (or set up a dinner event there). There's been a few times that this has been the case, for me.

brianwawok 10y ago

Why don't you ask them if you want to know what they are doing? I still don't get it.

andresgottlieb 10y ago
One word: friction.
ChazDazzle 10y ago
pictures and videos are more expressive than words
- adrianratnapala 10y ago
  I didn't understand that statement, could you perhaps draw an explanatory diagram for me?
cik2e 10y ago
Thank you, Gilfoyle. I'm with you though.
Sacho 10y ago
I am amazed this sentiment keeps popping up over and over in this thread. Asking them is exactly the kind of synchronous, flow-breaking communication that programmers should be keenly aware of. People are naturally discovering that polling is worse than event driven notifications, and it's great to watch. There are plenty of arguments to make in favor of synchronous, face-to-face etc communication, about the loss of privacy when you broadcast everything you do, about the lack of personal engagement in this kind of communication, and so on. I can see making a judgement call whether to participate in this kind of communication, because there are plenty of drawbacks and negatives. However, it's obvious to me why people are willingly switching some(most?) of their communication to it. Just as we learned to use asynchronous I/O in place of synchronous, we started using multicast messages and event-driven notifications instead of polling over all your friend-handles "hey what did you do today". It seems like a natural progression to me.
- danso 10y ago
  Great way to put it so that a technologist can understand. A lot of my best friends came from passive serendipitous interactions on FB that built into the kind strong and familiar enough to turn into "synchronous" interactions.
vidarh 10y ago
I think this may be largely an introvert vs. extrovert type distinction. I'm with you - I don't see the point. Twitter is the social network I've come closest to enjoy using, because of the loose expectations around it. I share stuff I find interesting on occasion, but very rarely anything about myself. In terms of "social" I see it as a mostly-write type environment - I don't sweat that I ignore 90% of what the people I follow write, and I mostly follow people for updates/news/commentary rather than social contact. But then I'm very aware that I'm very introverted. I like social contact in moderation, but it exhausts me, and every now and again I just get "social burnout" and turns into a total recluse for months on end. What doesn't work for me about Snapchat is primarily that it is video. Video to me is "high touch" - it takes much more energy than writing a tweet, and similarly watching a video requires magnitudes more attention than rapidly scanning past a bunch of tweets.

stormbeta 10y ago

I'm still lost. Maybe I just have radically different friends than everyone else here, but if I really have some pressing need to know what they're doing on a given day, I just ask them. Nobody cares about the day-to-day minutia, and if it was interesting, stuff like FB or regular messages work just fine. Like most social media apps, this just feels like a solution in search of a problem (except for sexting).

burkaman 10y ago
I think "solution in search of a problem" is a fine description, and not really a bad thing. Nobody says "I want a photo sharing app" and downloads Snapchat after doing some research. You get it because your friends have it, and you keep using it because you enjoy it. If your friends aren't using it, then you won't like it because there won't be anything to do.
trevor-e 10y ago
Not trying to be mean here, but I'm having quite the time watching you try to grok Snapchat. To me your argument reads like "why would I send someone a text message when I can call them?" when text messaging was first becoming popular. When you have more than a handful of friends that you're trying to keep in touch with, are you really going to ask every single one of them what they're up to each day? Snapchat solves this in a fun way.
- justinpombrio 10y ago
  > When you have more than a handful of friends that you're trying to keep in touch with, are you really going to ask every single one of them what they're up to each day? Good god why would I care? I imagine this difference in attitude accounts for some of the confusion over snapchat's purpose.
  - trevor-e 10y ago
    > Good god why would I care? If you're not interested in what your friends are up to, why are you friends with them in the first place? Maybe they're really just acquaintances? Like you said, maybe it's a difference in attitude. Still, I recommend you giving it a shot to get a better idea of what it is. I also thought it was dumb at first.

adrianratnapala 10y ago

Ahh, so maybe the appeal is its non-spamness? In that it doesn't clog up any kind of inbox?

greggman 10y ago

They are spam if I have to deal with them at all. Even skipping over things I'm not interested in is spam to me. It got so bad on FB I installed FB Purity. I have about 15 filters in there. Two to filter out one of my friend's posts who posts a pictures of every single meal every single day. I don't want to unfriend him nor unfollow him but his meal posts are spam to me. How would this be any different in Snapchat? I'd still have all these meal spam pics to skip over.

majewsky 10y ago
Exactly. The "Fear Of Missing Something Important" explained in https://medium.com/swlh/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3#.ksi6hj5na https://medium.com/swlh/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds...

puranjay 10y ago

But...why? Why do you want people to see what you ate? Is everyone here living more interesting lives than me? I mean, my stories will be just the same old lunch and dinner pics, working before a computer, commuting to and from work...

0x6c6f6c 10y ago
Some people are. Or not everybody shares their everyday activities, just when something worth sharing actually occurs
smileysteve 10y ago
> Why do you want people to see what you ate? Oh man. So at the after party of a recent wedding, the Bride had to post a picture of her nachos.
cableshaft 10y ago
If you make something interesting, I might want to get the recipe off you and try it myself, or ask if you'd like to make it for the next social thing I host. If you go somewhere I haven't been to (or it's a place I go to often but never tried what you got) and it looks like something I'd be interested in trying, I'll ask about your experience and maybe go sometime (or set up a dinner event there). There's been a few times that this has been the case, for me.