12 ms·

Introducing the new Snapchat

259 points by hacker_user 9y ago

jkoschei 9y ago
> The new Friends page to the left of the camera... > The new Discover page to the right of the camera... This reads like the manual to an early-90s text adventure.
- revx 9y ago
  > Go Friends
- karmelapple 9y ago
  As strange as Snapchat's UI is versus the standard mobile OS's UI guidelines, there's no denying their unorthodox UI has been wildly successful. There's definitely things to learn from their strategy.
  - m3rc 9y ago
    Really? Every friend of mine complains about the UI. Just yesterday a group of friends (early 20's) were commiserating over how nothing in Snapchat made any sense and just doing something as simple as getting to your friends list was difficult and unintuitive, requiring a couple false starts where you use the wrong swipe and end up somewhere you didn't mean to.
    - chrisdbaldwin 9y ago
      What if I told you that was part of the genius design? This "frustrating design" forces curiosity out of users to discover the app for themselves and encourages them to share these features with friends further augmenting the network effect. Based on which semi-hidden features get shared/used the most, Snap can A/B test faster than you'd imagine.
      - relix 9y ago
        That's indeed the myth, but even Evan disagrees with it or at least does no longer think that's for the best. From their Q3 earnings call (quoting Evan): > The one thing that we have heard over the years is that Snapchat is difficult to understand or hard to use, and our team has been working on responding to this feedback. As a result, we are currently redesigning our application to make it easier to use. There is a strong likelihood that the redesign of our application will be disruptive to our business in the short term, and we don't yet know how the behavior of our community will change when they begin to use our updated application. We're willing to take that risk for what we believe are substantial long-term benefits to our business.
      - m3rc 9y ago
        That's kind of a cute idea, but again the overwhelming consensus between the friends I was talking to was "this app sucks". One said they use the app infrequently because of this, and I know personally I try to NEVER discover anything, because any time I do a different action I end up somewhere I didn't want to be, usually with an ad shoved in my face. It just doesn't work the way you described. Frustration will never equal curiosity in users minds. Not saying Snapchat didn't try to get the curiosity angle, but that if they did they failed.
      - mrgreenfur 9y ago
        They are successful despite bad design, not because of it.
      - e12e 9y ago
        While I don't think the author thinks it forms an academic quality taxonomy anymore, I do like the ideas in "Players who Suits MUDs": http://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm http://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm Especially the idea that lack of friendly ux leads to more communication and cooperation between players. I don't think it's completely unreasonable that forcing network effects in "Mealsgate" (how do I even install pokemon go) might help form stronger network effects - which in turn is what surveillance machines/skinner boxes like snapchat needs in order to spread.
        9y ago
  - ganlaw 9y ago
    I don't think it has been successful for on-boarding new users. They are overwhelmed and don't know how to use the app.
    - madeofpalk 9y ago
      Supposedly that's why its been successful. Or at least that's what the HN crowd tells me why teenagers like the app. Personally, I don't buy it. Snapchat still manages to onboard new users who eventually learn how to use the app despite all its shortcomings, because people really want to use Snapchat. Having 'good UX' is just a shortcut for having people inside your app who aren't as committed to it.
- squeaky-clean 9y ago
  I only heard him say "Never swipe to the page on the right".
  - asdjasldkjkljd 9y ago
    Discover is kind of cool because you can watch random strangers' snapchats in your area, but yeah maybe I look at it once a week at most
SlyShy 9y ago
This seems like a solid response to Instagram eating their market share, as Instagram suffers from exactly the problem described (of course, as intended because Facebook's entire business model thrives on it).
- mcny 9y ago
  I absolutely abhor and detest the way Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter mess with my timeline. At least give me an option to sort everything in a reverse chronological order -- no "tweets I may have missed" -- by default. I hope the left friends screen will not have this mess.
  - perfectstorm 9y ago
    For Twitter you can flip a switch to go back to chronological order (at least on Android). The settings is called `Show me the best tweets first`.
eganist 9y ago
The anti-social-media stance they're taking is probably well informed given their target audience is growing a substantial aversion to oversharing on the long-lived-net and would rather overshare on the ephemeral-net. Their stock isn't necessarily enjoying it as much as they'd probably hoped. I might speculatively buy in if it seems like it's not a Digg v4
- bousaid 9y ago
  I just bought some - I’m considering snap another case of what Facebook went through. Very well informed about their user, lots of talent working for them, tons of users. However, I think their success will need to come from tailored paid content (also read, they need to collect more data on their users). Note: this is not investment advice.
  - eganist 9y ago
    Agreed. Just to add clarity to my earlier post: I did pull the trigger and take a long position in snap. We'll see how it goes; I've still essentially written off the principal as a loss, but if there's an inflection point, I suspect it'll be here. (likewise none of my commentary here is investment advice)
orliesaurus 9y ago
They realized that instagram's biggest enemy is the amount of advertising and fake-accounts there is pushed into your stream of photos and are using it to their advantage! clever :)
distantsounds 9y ago
Android's Camera API has existed for _literally years_ to take high-quality photos and these guys are still just taking a screenshot of the viewfinder and calling it a day. It's been like this forever and Snap has refused to fix this. I have yet to come across any other app on Android that utilizes the camera this way. The photos are complete garbage. And here they are, trying to add more 'features' into an app where its main feature has been inherently broken since inception. edit: this post kinda blew up. to see a real side-by-side comparison, https://imgur.com/a/wuaZi https://imgur.com/a/wuaZi
- therealmarv 9y ago
  omg they are really doing this? A shame!
- lnx01 9y ago
  I cannot wrap my head around why it was even implemented like this in the first place. Were they too lazy to look up the Camera API implemetation? Was it a hacky workaround to avoid some retriction in Android?
  - dannyw 9y ago
    It could be for a variety of reasons; 1. Compatibility with old devices or API levels 2. Performance optimisation for the filters 3. Lack of priority for the Android app On my iPhone, Snapchat definitely uses the full fledged APIs and even uses OIS or the image processor to pick/merge the best frame out of the video stream (a lot of blurry photos I take are unblurred), so I’m not sure why the Android experience is allegedly so lacklustre
- staticelf 9y ago
  lol is this true? Proof? If this is the case that's most likely why my phone took so shitty snaps when I had android.
- yojex 9y ago
  Snapchat takes beautiful photos on iOS. Some people I know even prefer to use it to the native camera. I wonder why this is different for Android? Does anyone have an insight here?
wingerlang 9y ago
I wonder why they made the video like they did. Essentially filming a filming session. Like behind the scenes styled. For a unique spin on it?
- sarreph 9y ago
  Next update's gonna be the filming of the filming of a filming session. So meta.
- mackwerk 9y ago
  Probably to make it feel like the video is being filmed through Snapchat :)
- rwc 9y ago
  The same reason there are illustrations that appear on screen and there's music in the background. Fundamentally, it's a boring topic (we moved our menus around). So they spiced it up with some things that create interest.
- roesel 9y ago
  The high-pitch noise in the background was what I noticed the most. I have nothing against the "behind the scenes" style, but at least don't hurt my ears.
draw_down 9y ago
They’re monetizing users just as Instagram is. Ultimately doesn’t seem much different to me.
grenoire 9y ago
Wait, what's even different? Serious question.
- smcl 9y ago
  I guess that under the hood there are modes the camera can operate in - lower-res "video" mode and a high-res "still" mode. When you're looking at the viewfinder it's kind of a video - so it'll be lower res and presumably will skip some corrections involved when a still is taken. Edit: oops I thought this was in reply to a comment where someone complained that the photo was taken from a screenshot of the viewfinder instead of using the camera functionality. Been a long day :-)
  - rjpr 9y ago
    Where are you getting this from? Unless I missed something all they're doing is moving around the menus a bit.
    - throwaway_lnd 9y ago
      My girlfriend noticed that she can use filters now. She has iPhone 4S. That may be related. I don't notice any other difference myself.
    - dbbk 9y ago
      I think they replied to the wrong person, the story here is that the menus have changed.
- dom96 9y ago
  I'm also wondering this. I don't use snapchat much, but from what the video showed in the article the "new snapchat" sounds exactly like the current snapchat. What am I missing here?
johnwheeler 9y ago
Sounds like the old snapchat
therealmarv 9y ago
Is this thing still a total bandwidth hog and downloading all snaps in alphabetical order instead the videos I want to see? This app was unusable in countries with low bandwidth like e.g. the Philippines. This is why Instagram wins... Instagram is really really great engineering and testing. I would even say it's one of the best optimized mobile apps out there.
- vlunkr 9y ago
  My experience with Instagram has not been that great. Videos don't play reliably, and when they do, it's a gamble if the audio will work or not.
- gnodar 9y ago
  Go to settings->manage and toggle Travel Mode on.
  - Shalomboy 9y ago
    Seconding this. Took snapchat to Sulawesi and had no issues.
dmart 9y ago
This is a nice, pro-consumer move, although I wonder if they will lose advertising revenue as a result. One would have to imagine that one of their big sells to Discover advertisers would be that their content is shoved in your face whenever you try to view friends' Stories.
anant90 9y ago
Teenagers, and for that matter, everyone yearns for smaller private spaces where they can share whatever they want with their closest friends — without any reservations of judgement from their parents, grandmas or uncles. I used to love Instagram, until Facebook decided to make it Facebook v2 by making my entire "friend" list follow me there as well. That means that until I invest a lot of time hiding my story from everyone but my closest friends (and of course no one has time for that), I'll just refrain from posting some of my true self there. On the other hand, the tight knit and private nature of the Snapchat network is going to keep it more attractive to me. At least for me, the amount of time spent in an app is more correlated with the depth of my relationships with other nodes on that network, and not just with the size of my audience. I’ve loved Snap as a company for a long time, and I like their pitch of using innovation as a moat: they have consistently innovated every year since their founding (Ephemerality, Stories, AR filters, Memories, Spectacles (although this has largely been a failure)), have a core set of users who really really love them, and are now playing to their strengths by positioning themselves well as the private space for you and your closest friends.
- finnh 9y ago
  This is a great post to read in comparison with iambateman's [0]. You prefer Snapchat because it is a space where you are safe to be yourself, without worrying about parents/uncles/etc seeing you. But iambateman's point is that making videos for our friends is a performative event, and thus drives one to (a) be different from your actual self (more funny/interesting/alive) or, at the very least, to (b) act as you see yourself reflected in their eyes - to be that version of yourself that they expect to see. To go all philosophy 101 on it, this is more-or-less the basic question of existentialism, with Snapchat acting as a multiplier for temptations to inauthenticity. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15807728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15807728
  - Apocryphon 9y ago
    And yet another angle- maybe the urge to perform can be a way in which the medium encourages creativity, not unlike the dearly departed Vine.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
iambateman 9y ago
Evan of Snapchat talks about “performing for your friends” as a strange “side effect” of Snapchat. But the instinct to perform is native to the Snapchat medium. I think this is a problem. I went to a concert a few weeks ago. The people beside me would stand still for 10 minutes and then someone would pull out Snapchat. The whole group would turn around, flash a smile and start dancing for the camera. 9 seconds later, they were back to watching the concert. Performance is a cultural virus that affects our happiness and creates a kind of perfect self-consciousness. It’s “instant replay” for all of life. And just like in American Football, when instant replay arrives, we start to (1) glorify the spectacular, (2) hyper-analyze every angle and (3) expect more moments worthy of instant replay. Snapchat pushes us to create more of those “replay worthy” moments. We narrate our lives according to the expectations of our “fans.” I hear 8-year-old kids yell “do it for the likes.” They are quietly subverting their self while sublimating the value of the crowd. How do I have an identity when I consistently invite other people - often strangers - to affirm my experiences? Those concert-goers felt the need to misrepresent their experience of the concert. The 8-year-olds adjusted their behavior to optimize for likes. When I was on Snapchat, I loved seeing myself in other people’s stories. It made me feel popular. I, too, adjusted my behavior to appear more likeable on camera. Adjusting Snapchat’s interface will do nothing to address the intrinsic ways that Snapchat reorients our relationships around performance. Perhaps this is obvious, but family and friends should love me the way I am. Not some imaginary version of me. And Snapchat nudges me to fake it.
- jakoblorz 9y ago
  Even if, technically, you can't do it for the likes on Snapchat, I completely agree with your point.
- token_throwaway 9y ago
  That's a pretty dramatic take. Social media use in general probably declines with age, and although I'm not sure how you'd quantify it, I bet that using social media primarily as a form of social proofing declines even quicker with age. All young people "perform" because their self-awareness is on extra high alert and their personalities are half-baked. This has been true since the dawn of high schools.
_pmf_ 9y ago
New Snapchat - same complete lack of a business model.
- dbbk 9y ago
  Snap has multiple revenue streams, what are you talking about?
  - ljk 9y ago
    serious question, other than the glasses that no one is buying, the ads where google and facebook take up most of the space, what do they have?
    - dbbk 9y ago
      They charge brands for special promotional filters. They charge publisher brands to appear in Discover. They charge users for geofilters for their own events (https://www.snapchat.com/geofilters https://www.snapchat.com/geofilters).
kalub92 9y ago
Sooooo it's exactly the same?
dirtyfrenchman 9y ago
Ok... so the app looks the same as it has for the past year? Not sure what's new here.
_arvin 9y ago
Introducing the new Snapchat: "Nothing's changed, except everything."
V-eHGsd_ 9y ago
I'm certainly not in snap's demo, but > You can think of it as a more sophisticated Best Friends algorithm that makes it easier to find the friends you want to talk to, when you want to talk to them. I can't for the life of me understand why I'd need something like this to help me find my existing friends when I want to talk to them.
- askafriend 9y ago
  This is for mobile. The goal is quick access to the people you talk to often without having to search. This passes the "subway test". You're walking out of a busy subway station and want to quickly take an action on the go - how fast can you get it done on a tiny mobile screen with so-so connectivity? On desktop, this is less of a problem when you have all the time, connectivity, and physical dexterity in the world to perform searches rapidly.
  - V-eHGsd_ 9y ago
    The default text message app has done this forever though, right? same with my phone contacts if I want to be a luddite and actually _call_ someone
ChanningAllen 9y ago
Good move. It seems like a pro-consumer move that is also, and for that reason, a savvy business move. Snap and Instagram as far as I can tell are are largely used by young people who don't like the noise, visibility, and clutter of Facebook. So this is an effective way for them to further distinguish themselves.
kahlonel 9y ago
There's going to be a nice little bump in their share prices. Not sure how long that will last though.
8x8squares 9y ago
There is an interesting article by Dan Kaplan on "Why Snapchat is Losing To Facebook And The Strategy It Can Use To Win" [1]. It is an amazing read for anyone interested. In the post, the author outlines a strategy which Snap can use to regain its relevance and importance in the social space. The author mentions how Snap can rebrand itself as a "self-expression company" that respects users' humanity. Interesting to see Snap taking steps in this direction. [1]: https://exponents.co/snap-facebook-key-competitive-strategy/ https://exponents.co/snap-facebook-key-competitive-strategy/
- bllguo 9y ago
  Definitely interesting. It's an especially strong proposition these days, when cybersecurity and privacy are so heavily emphasized. My main concern is that I am not convinced that this route can be monetized. Wish the author fleshed this out further.
perfectstorm 9y ago
They still haven't moved to the `newer` (not new anymore. been here for 3yrs now) permission modals on Android. The moment I hit the Install button on Google Play it prompts me to give blanket access to 11 different APIs. No way I'm gonna let them have it. Every app that I have on my Android device has been updated to this granular permission modal and for Facebook I manually turned off permissions after they started using the Storage permission to access my camera roll to display a carousel of photos that I've taken recently on my timeline.
cercatrova 9y ago
Nice, now I never need to swipe right. Wonder how they'll make money now.
losermachine 9y ago
This is weak
richardknop 9y ago
Just a personal anecdote but I have tried installing Snapchat app on my iPhone about a year ago or so. I have spent about 20 minutes tapping and swiping around the app to try to figure out how to use it. I couldn't get how it works and was so frustrated that I have uninstalled it. In addition to UI being most confusing and impossible for me to figure out, it was also super slow on a mobile network in Asia where I was at the time, near unresponsive. If I, as 25-30 years old tech person cannot figure out how to use your mobile app, you got a problem. I completely understand why the user base growth has completely flatlined. I assume there are a lot of people similar to me. I am very bearish on Snap.
- jedc 9y ago
  If you go looking for the Snapchat S-1 SEC filing, it essentially has a user guide for the app inside. (So that potential investors could figure out what the hell it was all about.)
Paraesthetic 9y ago
Will it fix their declining user base though?
ungzd 9y ago
How innovative! Older chat "apps": ICQ, IRC, talkd, WinPopup always separated "Publishers and Creators" and my friends! Furthermore, there was separate device for consuming "Publishers and Creators" called "TV".

259 points by hacker_user 9y ago

> The new Friends page to the left of the camera... > The new Discover page to the right of the camera... This reads like the manual to an early-90s text adventure.

revx 9y ago
> Go Friends
karmelapple 9y ago
As strange as Snapchat's UI is versus the standard mobile OS's UI guidelines, there's no denying their unorthodox UI has been wildly successful. There's definitely things to learn from their strategy.
- m3rc 9y ago
  Really? Every friend of mine complains about the UI. Just yesterday a group of friends (early 20's) were commiserating over how nothing in Snapchat made any sense and just doing something as simple as getting to your friends list was difficult and unintuitive, requiring a couple false starts where you use the wrong swipe and end up somewhere you didn't mean to.
  - chrisdbaldwin 9y ago
    What if I told you that was part of the genius design? This "frustrating design" forces curiosity out of users to discover the app for themselves and encourages them to share these features with friends further augmenting the network effect. Based on which semi-hidden features get shared/used the most, Snap can A/B test faster than you'd imagine.
    - relix 9y ago
      That's indeed the myth, but even Evan disagrees with it or at least does no longer think that's for the best. From their Q3 earnings call (quoting Evan): > The one thing that we have heard over the years is that Snapchat is difficult to understand or hard to use, and our team has been working on responding to this feedback. As a result, we are currently redesigning our application to make it easier to use. There is a strong likelihood that the redesign of our application will be disruptive to our business in the short term, and we don't yet know how the behavior of our community will change when they begin to use our updated application. We're willing to take that risk for what we believe are substantial long-term benefits to our business.
    - m3rc 9y ago
      That's kind of a cute idea, but again the overwhelming consensus between the friends I was talking to was "this app sucks". One said they use the app infrequently because of this, and I know personally I try to NEVER discover anything, because any time I do a different action I end up somewhere I didn't want to be, usually with an ad shoved in my face. It just doesn't work the way you described. Frustration will never equal curiosity in users minds. Not saying Snapchat didn't try to get the curiosity angle, but that if they did they failed.
    - mrgreenfur 9y ago
      They are successful despite bad design, not because of it.
    - e12e 9y ago
      While I don't think the author thinks it forms an academic quality taxonomy anymore, I do like the ideas in "Players who Suits MUDs": http://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm http://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm Especially the idea that lack of friendly ux leads to more communication and cooperation between players. I don't think it's completely unreasonable that forcing network effects in "Mealsgate" (how do I even install pokemon go) might help form stronger network effects - which in turn is what surveillance machines/skinner boxes like snapchat needs in order to spread.
      - 9y ago
- ganlaw 9y ago
  I don't think it has been successful for on-boarding new users. They are overwhelmed and don't know how to use the app.
  - madeofpalk 9y ago
    Supposedly that's why its been successful. Or at least that's what the HN crowd tells me why teenagers like the app. Personally, I don't buy it. Snapchat still manages to onboard new users who eventually learn how to use the app despite all its shortcomings, because people really want to use Snapchat. Having 'good UX' is just a shortcut for having people inside your app who aren't as committed to it.
squeaky-clean 9y ago
I only heard him say "Never swipe to the page on the right".
- asdjasldkjkljd 9y ago
  Discover is kind of cool because you can watch random strangers' snapchats in your area, but yeah maybe I look at it once a week at most

SlyShy 9y ago

This seems like a solid response to Instagram eating their market share, as Instagram suffers from exactly the problem described (of course, as intended because Facebook's entire business model thrives on it).

mcny 9y ago
I absolutely abhor and detest the way Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter mess with my timeline. At least give me an option to sort everything in a reverse chronological order -- no "tweets I may have missed" -- by default. I hope the left friends screen will not have this mess.
- perfectstorm 9y ago
  For Twitter you can flip a switch to go back to chronological order (at least on Android). The settings is called `Show me the best tweets first`.

eganist 9y ago

The anti-social-media stance they're taking is probably well informed given their target audience is growing a substantial aversion to oversharing on the long-lived-net and would rather overshare on the ephemeral-net. Their stock isn't necessarily enjoying it as much as they'd probably hoped. I might speculatively buy in if it seems like it's not a Digg v4

bousaid 9y ago
I just bought some - I’m considering snap another case of what Facebook went through. Very well informed about their user, lots of talent working for them, tons of users. However, I think their success will need to come from tailored paid content (also read, they need to collect more data on their users). Note: this is not investment advice.
- eganist 9y ago
  Agreed. Just to add clarity to my earlier post: I did pull the trigger and take a long position in snap. We'll see how it goes; I've still essentially written off the principal as a loss, but if there's an inflection point, I suspect it'll be here. (likewise none of my commentary here is investment advice)

orliesaurus 9y ago

They realized that instagram's biggest enemy is the amount of advertising and fake-accounts there is pushed into your stream of photos and are using it to their advantage! clever :)

distantsounds 9y ago

Android's Camera API has existed for _literally years_ to take high-quality photos and these guys are still just taking a screenshot of the viewfinder and calling it a day. It's been like this forever and Snap has refused to fix this. I have yet to come across any other app on Android that utilizes the camera this way. The photos are complete garbage. And here they are, trying to add more 'features' into an app where its main feature has been inherently broken since inception. edit: this post kinda blew up. to see a real side-by-side comparison, https://imgur.com/a/wuaZi https://imgur.com/a/wuaZi

therealmarv 9y ago
omg they are really doing this? A shame!
lnx01 9y ago
I cannot wrap my head around why it was even implemented like this in the first place. Were they too lazy to look up the Camera API implemetation? Was it a hacky workaround to avoid some retriction in Android?
- dannyw 9y ago
  It could be for a variety of reasons; 1. Compatibility with old devices or API levels 2. Performance optimisation for the filters 3. Lack of priority for the Android app On my iPhone, Snapchat definitely uses the full fledged APIs and even uses OIS or the image processor to pick/merge the best frame out of the video stream (a lot of blurry photos I take are unblurred), so I’m not sure why the Android experience is allegedly so lacklustre
staticelf 9y ago
lol is this true? Proof? If this is the case that's most likely why my phone took so shitty snaps when I had android.
yojex 9y ago
Snapchat takes beautiful photos on iOS. Some people I know even prefer to use it to the native camera. I wonder why this is different for Android? Does anyone have an insight here?

wingerlang 9y ago

I wonder why they made the video like they did. Essentially filming a filming session. Like behind the scenes styled. For a unique spin on it?

sarreph 9y ago
Next update's gonna be the filming of the filming of a filming session. So meta.
mackwerk 9y ago
Probably to make it feel like the video is being filmed through Snapchat :)
rwc 9y ago
The same reason there are illustrations that appear on screen and there's music in the background. Fundamentally, it's a boring topic (we moved our menus around). So they spiced it up with some things that create interest.
roesel 9y ago
The high-pitch noise in the background was what I noticed the most. I have nothing against the "behind the scenes" style, but at least don't hurt my ears.

draw_down 9y ago

They’re monetizing users just as Instagram is. Ultimately doesn’t seem much different to me.

grenoire 9y ago

Wait, what's even different? Serious question.

smcl 9y ago
I guess that under the hood there are modes the camera can operate in - lower-res "video" mode and a high-res "still" mode. When you're looking at the viewfinder it's kind of a video - so it'll be lower res and presumably will skip some corrections involved when a still is taken. Edit: oops I thought this was in reply to a comment where someone complained that the photo was taken from a screenshot of the viewfinder instead of using the camera functionality. Been a long day :-)
- rjpr 9y ago
  Where are you getting this from? Unless I missed something all they're doing is moving around the menus a bit.
  - throwaway_lnd 9y ago
    My girlfriend noticed that she can use filters now. She has iPhone 4S. That may be related. I don't notice any other difference myself.
  - dbbk 9y ago
    I think they replied to the wrong person, the story here is that the menus have changed.
dom96 9y ago
I'm also wondering this. I don't use snapchat much, but from what the video showed in the article the "new snapchat" sounds exactly like the current snapchat. What am I missing here?

johnwheeler 9y ago

Sounds like the old snapchat

therealmarv 9y ago

Is this thing still a total bandwidth hog and downloading all snaps in alphabetical order instead the videos I want to see? This app was unusable in countries with low bandwidth like e.g. the Philippines. This is why Instagram wins... Instagram is really really great engineering and testing. I would even say it's one of the best optimized mobile apps out there.

vlunkr 9y ago
My experience with Instagram has not been that great. Videos don't play reliably, and when they do, it's a gamble if the audio will work or not.
gnodar 9y ago
Go to settings->manage and toggle Travel Mode on.
- Shalomboy 9y ago
  Seconding this. Took snapchat to Sulawesi and had no issues.

dmart 9y ago

This is a nice, pro-consumer move, although I wonder if they will lose advertising revenue as a result. One would have to imagine that one of their big sells to Discover advertisers would be that their content is shoved in your face whenever you try to view friends' Stories.

anant90 9y ago

Teenagers, and for that matter, everyone yearns for smaller private spaces where they can share whatever they want with their closest friends — without any reservations of judgement from their parents, grandmas or uncles. I used to love Instagram, until Facebook decided to make it Facebook v2 by making my entire "friend" list follow me there as well. That means that until I invest a lot of time hiding my story from everyone but my closest friends (and of course no one has time for that), I'll just refrain from posting some of my true self there. On the other hand, the tight knit and private nature of the Snapchat network is going to keep it more attractive to me. At least for me, the amount of time spent in an app is more correlated with the depth of my relationships with other nodes on that network, and not just with the size of my audience. I’ve loved Snap as a company for a long time, and I like their pitch of using innovation as a moat: they have consistently innovated every year since their founding (Ephemerality, Stories, AR filters, Memories, Spectacles (although this has largely been a failure)), have a core set of users who really really love them, and are now playing to their strengths by positioning themselves well as the private space for you and your closest friends.

finnh 9y ago
This is a great post to read in comparison with iambateman's [0]. You prefer Snapchat because it is a space where you are safe to be yourself, without worrying about parents/uncles/etc seeing you. But iambateman's point is that making videos for our friends is a performative event, and thus drives one to (a) be different from your actual self (more funny/interesting/alive) or, at the very least, to (b) act as you see yourself reflected in their eyes - to be that version of yourself that they expect to see. To go all philosophy 101 on it, this is more-or-less the basic question of existentialism, with Snapchat acting as a multiplier for temptations to inauthenticity. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15807728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15807728
- Apocryphon 9y ago
  And yet another angle- maybe the urge to perform can be a way in which the medium encourages creativity, not unlike the dearly departed Vine.

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iambateman 9y ago

Evan of Snapchat talks about “performing for your friends” as a strange “side effect” of Snapchat. But the instinct to perform is native to the Snapchat medium. I think this is a problem. I went to a concert a few weeks ago. The people beside me would stand still for 10 minutes and then someone would pull out Snapchat. The whole group would turn around, flash a smile and start dancing for the camera. 9 seconds later, they were back to watching the concert. Performance is a cultural virus that affects our happiness and creates a kind of perfect self-consciousness. It’s “instant replay” for all of life. And just like in American Football, when instant replay arrives, we start to (1) glorify the spectacular, (2) hyper-analyze every angle and (3) expect more moments worthy of instant replay. Snapchat pushes us to create more of those “replay worthy” moments. We narrate our lives according to the expectations of our “fans.” I hear 8-year-old kids yell “do it for the likes.” They are quietly subverting their self while sublimating the value of the crowd. How do I have an identity when I consistently invite other people - often strangers - to affirm my experiences? Those concert-goers felt the need to misrepresent their experience of the concert. The 8-year-olds adjusted their behavior to optimize for likes. When I was on Snapchat, I loved seeing myself in other people’s stories. It made me feel popular. I, too, adjusted my behavior to appear more likeable on camera. Adjusting Snapchat’s interface will do nothing to address the intrinsic ways that Snapchat reorients our relationships around performance. Perhaps this is obvious, but family and friends should love me the way I am. Not some imaginary version of me. And Snapchat nudges me to fake it.

jakoblorz 9y ago
Even if, technically, you can't do it for the likes on Snapchat, I completely agree with your point.
token_throwaway 9y ago
That's a pretty dramatic take. Social media use in general probably declines with age, and although I'm not sure how you'd quantify it, I bet that using social media primarily as a form of social proofing declines even quicker with age. All young people "perform" because their self-awareness is on extra high alert and their personalities are half-baked. This has been true since the dawn of high schools.

_pmf_ 9y ago

New Snapchat - same complete lack of a business model.

dbbk 9y ago
Snap has multiple revenue streams, what are you talking about?
- ljk 9y ago
  serious question, other than the glasses that no one is buying, the ads where google and facebook take up most of the space, what do they have?
  - dbbk 9y ago
    They charge brands for special promotional filters. They charge publisher brands to appear in Discover. They charge users for geofilters for their own events (https://www.snapchat.com/geofilters https://www.snapchat.com/geofilters).

kalub92 9y ago

Sooooo it's exactly the same?

dirtyfrenchman 9y ago

Ok... so the app looks the same as it has for the past year? Not sure what's new here.

_arvin 9y ago

Introducing the new Snapchat: "Nothing's changed, except everything."

V-eHGsd_ 9y ago

I'm certainly not in snap's demo, but > You can think of it as a more sophisticated Best Friends algorithm that makes it easier to find the friends you want to talk to, when you want to talk to them. I can't for the life of me understand why I'd need something like this to help me find my existing friends when I want to talk to them.

askafriend 9y ago
This is for mobile. The goal is quick access to the people you talk to often without having to search. This passes the "subway test". You're walking out of a busy subway station and want to quickly take an action on the go - how fast can you get it done on a tiny mobile screen with so-so connectivity? On desktop, this is less of a problem when you have all the time, connectivity, and physical dexterity in the world to perform searches rapidly.
- V-eHGsd_ 9y ago
  The default text message app has done this forever though, right? same with my phone contacts if I want to be a luddite and actually _call_ someone

ChanningAllen 9y ago

Good move. It seems like a pro-consumer move that is also, and for that reason, a savvy business move. Snap and Instagram as far as I can tell are are largely used by young people who don't like the noise, visibility, and clutter of Facebook. So this is an effective way for them to further distinguish themselves.

kahlonel 9y ago

There's going to be a nice little bump in their share prices. Not sure how long that will last though.

8x8squares 9y ago

There is an interesting article by Dan Kaplan on "Why Snapchat is Losing To Facebook And The Strategy It Can Use To Win" [1]. It is an amazing read for anyone interested. In the post, the author outlines a strategy which Snap can use to regain its relevance and importance in the social space. The author mentions how Snap can rebrand itself as a "self-expression company" that respects users' humanity. Interesting to see Snap taking steps in this direction. [1]: https://exponents.co/snap-facebook-key-competitive-strategy/ https://exponents.co/snap-facebook-key-competitive-strategy/

bllguo 9y ago
Definitely interesting. It's an especially strong proposition these days, when cybersecurity and privacy are so heavily emphasized. My main concern is that I am not convinced that this route can be monetized. Wish the author fleshed this out further.

perfectstorm 9y ago

They still haven't moved to the `newer` (not new anymore. been here for 3yrs now) permission modals on Android. The moment I hit the Install button on Google Play it prompts me to give blanket access to 11 different APIs. No way I'm gonna let them have it. Every app that I have on my Android device has been updated to this granular permission modal and for Facebook I manually turned off permissions after they started using the Storage permission to access my camera roll to display a carousel of photos that I've taken recently on my timeline.

cercatrova 9y ago

Nice, now I never need to swipe right. Wonder how they'll make money now.

losermachine 9y ago

This is weak

richardknop 9y ago

Just a personal anecdote but I have tried installing Snapchat app on my iPhone about a year ago or so. I have spent about 20 minutes tapping and swiping around the app to try to figure out how to use it. I couldn't get how it works and was so frustrated that I have uninstalled it. In addition to UI being most confusing and impossible for me to figure out, it was also super slow on a mobile network in Asia where I was at the time, near unresponsive. If I, as 25-30 years old tech person cannot figure out how to use your mobile app, you got a problem. I completely understand why the user base growth has completely flatlined. I assume there are a lot of people similar to me. I am very bearish on Snap.

jedc 9y ago
If you go looking for the Snapchat S-1 SEC filing, it essentially has a user guide for the app inside. (So that potential investors could figure out what the hell it was all about.)

Paraesthetic 9y ago

Will it fix their declining user base though?

ungzd 9y ago

How innovative! Older chat "apps": ICQ, IRC, talkd, WinPopup always separated "Publishers and Creators" and my friends! Furthermore, there was separate device for consuming "Publishers and Creators" called "TV".