4 ms·

What are "stories"? What is the use case? If it's a low effort way to spam one's acquaintances, seems like a website/blog would be better for sharing images/tex

What are "stories"? What is the use case? If it's a low effort way to spam one's acquaintances, seems like a website/blog would be better for sharing images/text and also has the advantage of not being tied to some platform's walled garden. Also, why does a secure messaging app need stories? Is this part of a trend to make signal more like social media, or to balkanize the web? I think Telegram has something like this because often on the desktop browser I'll want to follow a link to something and it wants to open it in telegram. No thanks!

lynndotpy 4y ago
'Stories' were made popular by Snapchat in 2013, and they became the most-frequently used part of the app. They're a good way to give life status updates to a lot of friends at once, and provides a good conversation starter. This revives friendships and keeps communications going. From my experience, they are a non-optional part of socializing. By my estimation, my social and professional networking has materially suffered by not using Instagram or a Snapchat for most of my life. I wish this were not the case. Stories are popular because a lot of people have uses for them, but it's hard to articulate why they're useful. I'll try to explain: A website/blog wouldn't be better, because (1) a tiny fraction of people know about RSS, (2) a tiny fraction of people know how to make their own website/blog, (3) a website/blog is not as well-suited for on-the-fly updates like stories, and (4) absent RSS, nobody will check all $n$ of their friend's personal blogs as often as they open their messaging app. Furthermore, (1) stories are not crawled by default in an easy-to-access way (like Google or the internet archive), (2) the 24-hour time lock leads to different kinds of posts
- klabb3 4y ago
  > They're a good way to give life status updates to a lot of friends at once, and provides a good conversation starter. I've found with experience that whenever you share something, it needs to be deliberate to chosen people, otherwise it deteriorates into popularity seeking and least-common-denominator feel good spam. I much more prefer the "take photo/video or find a meme, send to specific people each time" flow. With snap, it takes a few seconds to choose, because contacts are sorted by recency. This is the only part of snap I'm using, and it existed before stories. Signal ended up somewhere inbetween, where you have to create a story (an imo unnecessary layer of i direction) and then add people to the story, which is minor from a tech perspective but huge issue for UX. It increases the friction for this flow.
- gspencley 4y ago
  > From my experience, they are a non-optional part of socializing I must not have much of a social life then, since I've apparently managed to go 9 years without having anything to do with them. Maybe I'm just getting old.
  - pndy 4y ago
    Rather being hooked on social media, I believe. I never seen this feature as useful or interesting at all anywhere and I'm in mid 30s. My friends who are either bit younger or slightly older and who are still sitting on fb for whatever reasons or ig appear to be using stories - at least that's what I've seen last time I've check facebook.

lynndotpy 4y ago

'Stories' were made popular by Snapchat in 2013, and they became the most-frequently used part of the app. They're a good way to give life status updates to a lot of friends at once, and provides a good conversation starter. This revives friendships and keeps communications going. From my experience, they are a non-optional part of socializing. By my estimation, my social and professional networking has materially suffered by not using Instagram or a Snapchat for most of my life. I wish this were not the case. Stories are popular because a lot of people have uses for them, but it's hard to articulate why they're useful. I'll try to explain: A website/blog wouldn't be better, because (1) a tiny fraction of people know about RSS, (2) a tiny fraction of people know how to make their own website/blog, (3) a website/blog is not as well-suited for on-the-fly updates like stories, and (4) absent RSS, nobody will check all $n$ of their friend's personal blogs as often as they open their messaging app. Furthermore, (1) stories are not crawled by default in an easy-to-access way (like Google or the internet archive), (2) the 24-hour time lock leads to different kinds of posts

klabb3 4y ago
> They're a good way to give life status updates to a lot of friends at once, and provides a good conversation starter. I've found with experience that whenever you share something, it needs to be deliberate to chosen people, otherwise it deteriorates into popularity seeking and least-common-denominator feel good spam. I much more prefer the "take photo/video or find a meme, send to specific people each time" flow. With snap, it takes a few seconds to choose, because contacts are sorted by recency. This is the only part of snap I'm using, and it existed before stories. Signal ended up somewhere inbetween, where you have to create a story (an imo unnecessary layer of i direction) and then add people to the story, which is minor from a tech perspective but huge issue for UX. It increases the friction for this flow.
gspencley 4y ago
> From my experience, they are a non-optional part of socializing I must not have much of a social life then, since I've apparently managed to go 9 years without having anything to do with them. Maybe I'm just getting old.
- pndy 4y ago
  Rather being hooked on social media, I believe. I never seen this feature as useful or interesting at all anywhere and I'm in mid 30s. My friends who are either bit younger or slightly older and who are still sitting on fb for whatever reasons or ig appear to be using stories - at least that's what I've seen last time I've check facebook.