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Teenagers, and for that matter, everyone yearns for smaller private spaces where they can share whatever they want with their closest friends — without any rese

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.
- anant90 9y ago
  I totally see iambateman's point, and agree with it. As far as inauthenticity goes, I would say that it pervades all aspects of our lives, including real-life interactions, which we can assume to be most authentic, yet at some level inauthentic (almost everyone changes themselves a bit depending on who they're talking to). On this spectrum, the Snapchat experience is a lot more authentic and closer to real-life interactions than Instagram/Facebook, which are a lot worse multipliers of inauthenticity.
  - __sha3d2 9y ago
    > As far as inauthenticity goes, I would say that it pervades all aspects of our lives, including real-life interactions, which we can assume to be most authentic, yet at some level inauthentic (almost everyone changes themselves a bit depending on who they're talking to). An important and totally missed point! Nice one.
spike021 9y ago
Not sure I understand what you mean. You can set your Instagram to private and even if friends from Facebook see that you have an account there they can't just view your content. They'd need to send a follow request to do that. IG can easily still be a private space. I don't accept everyone who's on my friends list from Facebook. e: Also, while it's potentially more work there's nothing stopping you from having multiple accounts on Instagram. The UI is actually pretty simple when it comes to swapping between more than one as needed.
- kaycebasques 9y ago
  Snap lets you send stories (or whatever they're called) to specific groups of people, yes? That's a huge differentiator, in my book. It provides a simple interface for sharing experiences with specific people. Not really any different than a group SMS or other form of group chat, really. But a very different experience from Instagram, for sure.
  - spike021 9y ago
    You can do that in Instagram as well. You can create chat groups and specifically send them one of the exploding "snaps" for lack of a better word.
  - askafriend 9y ago
    Instagram has 1:1 feature parity now. You might not have checked it out in a while. I've been on since it launched when they didn't have parity but they quickly caught up. It's possible to send disappearing video or photo stories to only selected individuals or selected group chats or a mix of both.
- anant90 9y ago
  You're absolutely correct. I'm not arguing whether it's possible to use Instagram like one would use Snapchat — it is, and my points won't make any sense from that POV. I was laying down my observations on what's the default, and hence seemingly most common behavior for the given network. All snapchat accounts are private by default (yes, you can make stories public like on Instagram). All Instagram accounts are public by default (yes, you can make it private) The power of default has a significant role to play in how people think about and use a particular network. This is even more true for the people who are not very tech savvy, which is the majority. Again, not arguing if Instagram is better than Snapchat, or vice versa. Instagram probably will win the majority of the market, and will have an order of magnitude, if not more, users, engagement and revenue. Will Snapchat become irrelevant and die? I'd say it's too early to make that call.
Simon_says 9y ago
The best advice is to not put anything into electronic form that you wouldn't want your everyone you know (along with prosecuting attorneys) to read about in detail in the newspaper. Facebook may promise something is private, but all it takes is the smallest software bug and their promises are ashes.
- vernie 9y ago
  Fortunately nobody reads the newspaper anymore.
  - Simon_says 9y ago
    Is that the point of what I said?
    - vernie 9y ago
      No, your point is even more trash than that.

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.
anant90 9y ago
I totally see iambateman's point, and agree with it. As far as inauthenticity goes, I would say that it pervades all aspects of our lives, including real-life interactions, which we can assume to be most authentic, yet at some level inauthentic (almost everyone changes themselves a bit depending on who they're talking to). On this spectrum, the Snapchat experience is a lot more authentic and closer to real-life interactions than Instagram/Facebook, which are a lot worse multipliers of inauthenticity.
- __sha3d2 9y ago
  > As far as inauthenticity goes, I would say that it pervades all aspects of our lives, including real-life interactions, which we can assume to be most authentic, yet at some level inauthentic (almost everyone changes themselves a bit depending on who they're talking to). An important and totally missed point! Nice one.

spike021 9y ago

Not sure I understand what you mean. You can set your Instagram to private and even if friends from Facebook see that you have an account there they can't just view your content. They'd need to send a follow request to do that. IG can easily still be a private space. I don't accept everyone who's on my friends list from Facebook. e: Also, while it's potentially more work there's nothing stopping you from having multiple accounts on Instagram. The UI is actually pretty simple when it comes to swapping between more than one as needed.

kaycebasques 9y ago
Snap lets you send stories (or whatever they're called) to specific groups of people, yes? That's a huge differentiator, in my book. It provides a simple interface for sharing experiences with specific people. Not really any different than a group SMS or other form of group chat, really. But a very different experience from Instagram, for sure.
- spike021 9y ago
  You can do that in Instagram as well. You can create chat groups and specifically send them one of the exploding "snaps" for lack of a better word.
- askafriend 9y ago
  Instagram has 1:1 feature parity now. You might not have checked it out in a while. I've been on since it launched when they didn't have parity but they quickly caught up. It's possible to send disappearing video or photo stories to only selected individuals or selected group chats or a mix of both.
anant90 9y ago
You're absolutely correct. I'm not arguing whether it's possible to use Instagram like one would use Snapchat — it is, and my points won't make any sense from that POV. I was laying down my observations on what's the default, and hence seemingly most common behavior for the given network. All snapchat accounts are private by default (yes, you can make stories public like on Instagram). All Instagram accounts are public by default (yes, you can make it private) The power of default has a significant role to play in how people think about and use a particular network. This is even more true for the people who are not very tech savvy, which is the majority. Again, not arguing if Instagram is better than Snapchat, or vice versa. Instagram probably will win the majority of the market, and will have an order of magnitude, if not more, users, engagement and revenue. Will Snapchat become irrelevant and die? I'd say it's too early to make that call.

Simon_says 9y ago

The best advice is to not put anything into electronic form that you wouldn't want your everyone you know (along with prosecuting attorneys) to read about in detail in the newspaper. Facebook may promise something is private, but all it takes is the smallest software bug and their promises are ashes.

vernie 9y ago
Fortunately nobody reads the newspaper anymore.
- Simon_says 9y ago
  Is that the point of what I said?
  - vernie 9y ago
    No, your point is even more trash than that.