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I absolutely hate Facebook, but I think Snap is really getting 'social media' right. There's no political nonsense or advertising being shoved down my throat, j

I absolutely hate Facebook, but I think Snap is really getting 'social media' right. There's no political nonsense or advertising being shoved down my throat, just endless cat videos and memes from my friends the way it should be. When my friends post something, it's guaranteed I will see it. There are options for group chat and 'forum' style communication, but the core experience is intimate and private. They're doing all the right things IMO (for now).

wlesieutre 9y ago
Snap separated out the sponsored stuff into a different section from your friends and gives you full control of the communication area, which IMO is much better than what Facebook is doing with "recommended for you" nonsense popping into my Instagram feed. There's probably a lot of interesting sponsored content, but if I want to just use it as a chat app it doesn't get in the way. That's the big advantage that Apple has with iMessages, no pressure to make a worse service for users in order to turn a profit. We'll see if Snap can manage to do it without driving their users off to the next one.
ihoqwwieuy8 9y ago
Just the content from people you're directly connected to. What a novel approach to online socializing, said IRC, MSN, AIM, ICQ... I forget though, that SV and places like Ycom can't resell old tech to investors. Pets.com taught us you have to just keep cranking out the hits, or they'll get wise to the hollow value really being proposed.
GuiA 9y ago
This fundamental property of "show me only things from people I explicitly added, and show me everything they post (ideally in reverse chronological order)" is what many (myself included) seem to want from social media. Sadly, it seems to be directly at odds with what companies want, because social networks often start off with having that property and lose it as they need to make the investors happy. - Facebook -> hasn't been true in a looooong time - Instagram -> hasn't been true in a few years - Twitter -> I think it's not true anymore? Might be if you click the right options in your settings, but who knows for how long
- dannyw 9y ago
  Snapchat's new update makes this not true. Your friends tab is ranked by an algorithm, and is no longer in reserve chronological order.
- dguo 9y ago
  Yeah, Twitter switched to an algorithmic feed in 2016 [1]. There is an option to turn off "Show the best Tweets first," but I don't know if that will actually cause the entire feed to be chronological. An annoying thing about Twitter that I experienced recently is I started getting notifications for "top Tweets." I had to tell Twitter multiple times that I didn't want them before they stopped (there was no option to put an immediate stop to them). [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/technology/personaltech/putting-your-twitter-feed-back-in-chronological-order.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/technology/personaltech/p...
  - prawn 9y ago
    There is no way that I've found to turn off Twitter things like trying to recommend people to follow, or things I might've missed. I cancel them every time and get the "We'll show this less often" response, but cannot get them to just never show again. It's baffling that they go out of their way to frustrate long term users.
  - dawnerd 9y ago
    Yeah twitter still messes up the order even with all the settings right. Have to resort to using tweetbot just to catch stuff. It’s insane.
  - deepGem 9y ago
    The other annoying new feature in Twitter is the notifications for missed tweets or summaries. I mean, there is a reason I've missed those tweets. I don't want to be taken into the past. If I need to, I'll scroll a hundred times and visit the past. Please show me the latest tweets on my page without any notifications or other distractions, preferably sorted by the importance of people I follow. Importance = function (frequency of me retweeting or liking this person's tweets, duration of follow)
fancyfacebook 9y ago
I have never used facebook or snapchat but this is what drove me off of linkedin too, it used to be 100% updates from people I knew, and somehow morphed into 99% "news feed" crap that I never want to see, ever. I don't care what your analytics say about user engagement, they are wrong. Just stop the "relevancy game" and the stupid news feeds everywhere.
- ryandrake 9y ago
  I think we need an add-on to Zawinski's law, "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail." These days, every program seems to expand until it includes an unwanted news feed.
- ramzyo 9y ago
  So true, it’s impossible to see what I truly want to see on FB and LinkedIn - updates from people that I care about in reverse chronological order!
debt 9y ago
I do think compared to Facebook, Snapchat has been slow to open up their platform. I think that has actually helped Snap as I don’t know that the ways in which Facebook has opened up it’s platform has contributed much in terms of value to the share price.

wlesieutre 9y ago

Snap separated out the sponsored stuff into a different section from your friends and gives you full control of the communication area, which IMO is much better than what Facebook is doing with "recommended for you" nonsense popping into my Instagram feed. There's probably a lot of interesting sponsored content, but if I want to just use it as a chat app it doesn't get in the way. That's the big advantage that Apple has with iMessages, no pressure to make a worse service for users in order to turn a profit. We'll see if Snap can manage to do it without driving their users off to the next one.

ihoqwwieuy8 9y ago

Just the content from people you're directly connected to. What a novel approach to online socializing, said IRC, MSN, AIM, ICQ... I forget though, that SV and places like Ycom can't resell old tech to investors. Pets.com taught us you have to just keep cranking out the hits, or they'll get wise to the hollow value really being proposed.

GuiA 9y ago

This fundamental property of "show me only things from people I explicitly added, and show me everything they post (ideally in reverse chronological order)" is what many (myself included) seem to want from social media. Sadly, it seems to be directly at odds with what companies want, because social networks often start off with having that property and lose it as they need to make the investors happy. - Facebook -> hasn't been true in a looooong time - Instagram -> hasn't been true in a few years - Twitter -> I think it's not true anymore? Might be if you click the right options in your settings, but who knows for how long

dannyw 9y ago
Snapchat's new update makes this not true. Your friends tab is ranked by an algorithm, and is no longer in reserve chronological order.
dguo 9y ago
Yeah, Twitter switched to an algorithmic feed in 2016 [1]. There is an option to turn off "Show the best Tweets first," but I don't know if that will actually cause the entire feed to be chronological. An annoying thing about Twitter that I experienced recently is I started getting notifications for "top Tweets." I had to tell Twitter multiple times that I didn't want them before they stopped (there was no option to put an immediate stop to them). [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/technology/personaltech/putting-your-twitter-feed-back-in-chronological-order.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/technology/personaltech/p...
- prawn 9y ago
  There is no way that I've found to turn off Twitter things like trying to recommend people to follow, or things I might've missed. I cancel them every time and get the "We'll show this less often" response, but cannot get them to just never show again. It's baffling that they go out of their way to frustrate long term users.
- dawnerd 9y ago
  Yeah twitter still messes up the order even with all the settings right. Have to resort to using tweetbot just to catch stuff. It’s insane.
- deepGem 9y ago
  The other annoying new feature in Twitter is the notifications for missed tweets or summaries. I mean, there is a reason I've missed those tweets. I don't want to be taken into the past. If I need to, I'll scroll a hundred times and visit the past. Please show me the latest tweets on my page without any notifications or other distractions, preferably sorted by the importance of people I follow. Importance = function (frequency of me retweeting or liking this person's tweets, duration of follow)

fancyfacebook 9y ago

I have never used facebook or snapchat but this is what drove me off of linkedin too, it used to be 100% updates from people I knew, and somehow morphed into 99% "news feed" crap that I never want to see, ever. I don't care what your analytics say about user engagement, they are wrong. Just stop the "relevancy game" and the stupid news feeds everywhere.

ryandrake 9y ago
I think we need an add-on to Zawinski's law, "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail." These days, every program seems to expand until it includes an unwanted news feed.
ramzyo 9y ago
So true, it’s impossible to see what I truly want to see on FB and LinkedIn - updates from people that I care about in reverse chronological order!

debt 9y ago

I do think compared to Facebook, Snapchat has been slow to open up their platform. I think that has actually helped Snap as I don’t know that the ways in which Facebook has opened up it’s platform has contributed much in terms of value to the share price.