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Snapchat weighs what was once unthinkable: permanent snaps
- Ancalagon 8y agoSlightly off topic: I've noticed many of my once-prolific snap friends are no longer posting as much, and instead are posting to instagram. Honestly it makes me a little sad, I have a ton of good memories from this app, and Snap in general seems much more concerned with user privacy than instagram and Facebook at large. Here's to hoping they make a comeback in the future!
- paxys 8y agoSnapchat completely blew it with their app update, and Instagram just happened to release stories at exactly the right time to get their fleeing users.
- rayvy 8y agoYea as I can't count how many times I've seen a "stories" feature open on someone's phone and asked "Oh I didn't know Snapchat had that?", only to be told that it was Instagram. Insta ate Snapchat's lunch - pretty brutally.
- gorkish 8y agoGee I can't imagine why the snapchat ethos of burying undocumented but core features deep within the app until they are unlocked by an errant gesture wouldn't be more popular? Time and time again, I question why I would want to be told how to use an app when I could have so much fun making a game of discovery out of it. Really it's probably for the best that these things are provided only to the most prolific and zealous users though. Maybe some day I will be lucky enough to fall on the right side of the A/B testing line and get the good stuff.
- brlewis 8y agoIt makes me sad too, and I use Instagram and don't like Snapchat. Instagram has focused way too much on competing with Snapchat with "stories". I wish it would stop pushing this feature so hard; it gets in the way of the main photo feed experience for me.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoYou can mute Stories of individual people 1 at a time but it has helped me. I mute the people who are just overall obnoxious. If they post pictures I still see them.
- austinl 8y agoI've got a similar anecdote: my friends in San Francisco or New York have moved over to Instagram entirely. My friends in the midwest or south (Chicago, Austin) still use Snapchat. There's probably a network effect — a couple of strong links in the friend group in that city keeps it going. I also wonder if usage in coastal cities is a leading indicator.
- rjkennedy98 8y agoInteresting comment. I live in the midwest and all my friends use snapchat.
- Vinnl 8y ago> Snap in general seems much more concerned with user privacy than instagram and Facebook at large Wait, is this the same Snap that convinced people to share intimate pictures by making them inaccessible after a short while, but retains the right to store those pictures indefinitely and to use them for other purposes? (Mostly-but-not-entirely rhetorical question, since I never used it and haven't looked closely into their privacy policies - so I might actually be wrong.)
- JohnJamesRambo 8y agoHow about working on the unthinkable, which is fixing the impossible to navigate UI?
- pax 8y ago160M daily active users might beg to differ. Otherwise, I (xennial) tried it twice and found the UI rather confusing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapchat#Growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapchat#Growth
- applanation 8y ago> impossible to navigate It is depressing to me how low the bar is for our ability to learn an application. If the UI has more than a single list or button, it becomes "impossible to navigate". There was a time when users would expect some time getting to know their application and even, dare I say, read a guide or manual! Sometimes extremely powerful, creative, and useful tools will have a learning curve. Snap could offer some amazing capabilities, but because of this "simple is everything" mindset, they will face outrage if they expose anything beyond message passing.
- companyhen 8y agoThe thing is, their old UI was near perfect. They ended up pulling a Digg v3.0
- saagarjha 8y agoMaking a UI that requires reading a guide or manual necessary is kind of depressing as well, to be honest.
- dahfizz 8y agoThere is a big difference between a complex UI on a complex application and an unintuitive UI on what should be very simple. It is completely nonsensical how Snapchat works. You have to swipe every which way and there's no clues when to swipe where. You just have to memorize the magical incantation to do what you want through trial and error. We as a society have built up a fantastic 'language' of UI. We know what buttons and menus, etc do. Snapchat throws away all the ways you want to intuitively navigate and give you no clues about what to do instead.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 8y agoMaybe it'll go the way of the Facebook dislike button.
- jayd16 8y agoI'm still surprised people think their snaps can't be scraped and saved forever.
- chii 8y agoi believe the other party will be informed by snapchat if you took a screeshot of it.
- thisacctforreal 8y agoThey go out of their way to detect root and block the app on Android, but I'm sure there are counter counter measures regardless.
- jondwillis 8y agoYeah, airplane mode, make the API call fail, reset local state before re-connecting.
- cortesoft 8y agoPlus, the impossible to plug analog hole... taking a picture of your phone with another camera.
- chii 8y agobut you take a quality loss...
- jayd16 8y agoDid they ever plug the adb screen capture hole?
- krageon 8y agoLog in on a different device and move the token to a rooted device. The check is only run on login IIRC.
- SquishyPanda23 8y ago
- lwhi 8y agoAll this confirms to me, is the fact that the app space is mainly a battleground for highly evolved corporate entities to fight for attention and profit. Being unique or solving a purpose that's genuinely useful to its audience, doesn't seem to be a primary aim of businesses like Snapchat.
- hrpolice 8y agoWell my grand-mother has an account on Snap and she keeps complaining she cannot find the account of Donald.
- raz32dust 8y agoCan it solve a problem for which people are willing to pay? If not, advertising is the only source of revenue, which means they have to fight for people's attention.
- coralreef 8y ago- Snapchat didn't exist until 7 years ago, so not sure they qualify as a highly evolved corporate entity - Snapchat solves a unique communication problem (the desire to express yourself without it living forever). It still solves this problem today, however so do a lot of competitors.
- n1c 8y agoI _think_ they mean that it's the entities that post on the platform that are "highly evolved corporate entities fighting for attention".
- SiempreViernes 8y agoThat's a good point, most of the social media platforms have parts that are essentially lawless advertising space.
- gaius 8y agothey qualify as a highly evolved corporate entity Why not? You’re a highly evolved biological entity and you were from the very moment you were conceived! Evolution refers to your ancestors, not to any individual.
- redwyvern 8y agoHow about returning localized stories specific to cities and college campuses? That feature was so important to so many people, and it was just suddenly killed last year.
- kbar13 8y agosnapchat leadership is lost
- feocco 8y agoThat's still a thing via the map. You can also pay for a location based filter & start a similar story as well. Ideal for weddings.
- badwolf 8y agoI bought my first personal filter/lenses for a friends wedding. It was a big hit, to the point that nearly any large gathering someone will snapcash/venmo/applepay/payment method du jour me a few bucks to make a filter or lens and story for their event (christmas party, baby shower, housewarming, cocktail party, etc...)
- TheRealPomax 8y agoBut: "does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me... ugh this is so sad." -- Kylie Jenner, moments before she caused Snapchat's stock price to tank.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoStill surprised they have not bothered to address the UI redesign that many complain about.
- grillvogel 8y agonot sure why all the snapchat hate, my friends all use it as our go to messaging app. i dont need years of inane conversations all archived for all time on my phone, also they have the best sticker emojis
- badwolf 8y agoThat's one of the main uses my friends groups have evolved to. At most saving the last 24 hours is just fine. I don't really see a need to keep everything forever and ever
- llampx 8y agoIts funny that that's basically the opposite of what made Gmail successful - that you never have to delete any email.
- pmiller2 8y agoThis reminds me a bit of how OkCupid basically turned their app into Tinder: got rid of screen names, swipe to match, and can only message users you’ve mutually matched with. Maybe all dating apps will eventually become Tinder, and all photo-oriented messaging apps will turn into some hybrid of Snap/Insta.
- lfx 8y agoBy the way, OkCupid and Tinger, and PlentyOfFish some other belong to the same group/company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_Group It's likely that they making all apps alike to match most grossing.
- wtmt 8y agoWhen Instagram copied Snapchat and released the stories feature, Snapchat should've quickly copied everything else from Instagram (except all the nastiness that Facebook pushes) and offered those as optional...like storing snaps permanently. Snap really missed the boat on this, along with the UI redesign that turned off the core user base. Instagram is only going to get worse with Mark Zuckerberg pushing it. Snap could still be an alternative if it focuses on what users want and keep what users may not want as optional or as a new app altogether.
- telaport 8y agoWhat do users want?
- vit05 8y agoI do not know if SnapChat would succeed just by copying some functionality. Snap grew by offering an opportunity to share small, stupid day-to-day moments. We are curious about what others do. That's why reality shows and gossip magazines were so successful. But the point is that by introducing Stories, Instagram provided this opportunity to spy on the lives of others. But also the opportunity to build a profile. This is important for anyone who has the ability to entertain others for longer, the influencers. And make others believe they could be that too. Just saving a snap would not be enough. Snap would have to provide a landing page for each user that could be attractive enough for others to start following it. And some small clips is not so attractive, because you have to wait without doing nothing. In Instagram, in a few second rolling someone feed you would like it or not. In addition, Instagram's search system improved greatly during this time of competition. While on snapchat is non-existent.
- joeblow9999 8y agoThe snaps have ALWAYS been permanent. They are just not shown on your phone after a certain window of time.
- MorrisofOrange 8y agoNo, Snapchat said they get deleted from their servers after 30 days, and that was after law enforcement got their panties in a knot. Unless youre saying Snapchat is lying about that.
- dymk 8y agoHN claims that Facebook just bold-face lies about <topic of the day> all the time, are we not going to hold Snapchat to the same scrutiny?
- MorrisofOrange 8y agoExcept this what separated them from the competition. It would be like if Apple confessed iOS was Android with different graphics. Also Snapchat can mine your data without keeping your pictures forever and ever.
- twblalock 8y agoIn today's news: people who take photos expect their photos to last more than a few minutes. There is no reason not to skip to the next photo sharing platform because nothing is saved. It's a platform without a platform effect.
- gammateam 8y agonext quarter: Snapcoin
- accosine 8y agoAll social apps will sooner or later have a payment story to stay relevant - see WeChat.
- rblion 8y agoSnap is only on my phone because my phone storage fills up sometimes and I need space to save photos or videos. I don't look at anyone's stories anymore. The people I care about, I make time to hang out with them in person or call them when I miss them. You know, like people used to before 2010. There I said it. I know I'm not alone.
- josteink 8y ago> I don't look at anyone's stories anymore. I don't know about anyone else, but posting a story is the only guaranteed way to ensure I don't even check it. That applies equally to Snapchat, instagram and facebook. As a means of communication, it just doesn't work for me.
- rblion 8y agoI used to if it was a girl I was talking to or while my friends traveled. I just don't care anymore. Posting stories and checking who saw it, seeing others is a time waster. I love my work, my hobbies, solitude, family, analog lifestyle as much as possible.
- paulie_a 8y agoSo the primary purpose of Snapchat, sharing nudity temporarily is now permanent?
- bostik 8y agoWorse. From the article: The company is also weighing an option to reveal the identities of Snapchat users who make public posts Of course, the irony is not lost on Reuters because just a few lines after that: Snap is carefully weighing the privacy, technical and legal considerations of revealing user identities on public posts So the way I read this is that Snap are giving up their transient nature and planning to become yet another platform for industrial grade stalking.
- ulfw 8y agoPlease someone enlighten me what the uniqueness of Snap(chat) then will be again?
- mac01021 8y agoI never got snapchat. For all but a few odd use cases, expiring messages/posts seem to me to be strictly worse than permanently hosted ones.
- pure-awesome 8y agoI don't know if I'd call sending nudes an "odd use-case", but that's what I've always understood to be Snapchat's primary use-case. (The fact that temporary photos can be quite easily screenshotted, photographed etc. is an unfortunate limitation, and something which many users may not realize)
- smelendez 8y agoI do think it shifts norms, which is important. There are places where it's legal to record your conversations when you go out with friends, and even whether it's legal or not it's incredibly easy to do. But good luck having much of a social life or even getting served in the local bar if people know you're always wearing a wire.
- pure-awesome 8y ago> I do think it shifts norms, which is important. Sorry, I'm not sure I understand. What, exactly, shifts norms?
- badwolf 8y agoI communicate with pictures a lot (gifs, photos/snaps, bitmojis, etc...) A friend asks "whatcha doin?" it's fun to reply with a quick snap of what I'm doing. It almost makes you feel a bit "closer" to other people when you can get a quick glimpse into their world. A quick snap of a friend cooking is greater than a simple "I'm cooking" text. But I don't necessarily need or want to save that image (or really even that text)