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Putting the Chat into Snapchat
- esquivalience 12y agoDoesn't this start to erode the spontaneity and key purpose of Snapchat? To what extent do you think this is feature creep?
- k-mcgrady 12y agoI think it's supposed to be ephemeral (not spontaneous). The ephemerality doesn't change with this update as the conversations disappear when they're completed (with the option to save important messages). Similar to conversations IRL I guess. You speak with someone, note down/save important things such as addresses and then everything else is lost.
- giga_cardoso 12y agoIs the update only available in the US? nothing here in Portugal
- kivikakk 12y agoNeither in Australia.
- jogzden 12y agoI just got the update now. Check again. I'm really liking the new UI.
- spaam 12y agoi guess we outside US going to get it later.
- k-mcgrady 12y agoIt's probably still rolling out to all App Stores (it can take a few hours).
- ballpoint 12y agoNothing in the UK yet either.
- tbomb 12y agoI still don't have it and I'm in the US :(
- ghiculescu 12y agoThis is a great. I find that half my snapchats are boring photos of my face, lunch, or coffee mug, just so I can put a caption over them. No more! It also seems like a full on attack against Facebook messenger.
- dnlserrano 12y agoTotally agree about Facebook messenger. This is a game changer. FB messenger is going to be the I'm-on-the-subway-and-don't-know-anyone-so-I-better-not-look-silly kinda app, and that's boring.
- sillysaurus3 12y agoI'm-on-the-subway-and-don't-know-anyone-so-I-better-not-look-silly kinda app Hmm, what does this mean? I really don't understand, sorry! Sounds interesting though.
- dnlserrano 12y agoIt means people will user Facebook messenger when they are not comfortable with the place they are in. If I'm at home, at my university or my cousins' I will chose Snapchat over Facebook messenger, because I'll feel free enough that I can talk and goof around with that app, in a way that is not possible with Facebook... yet! Also, I think there are people less boring than me who will not give a damn and will use Snapchat's Chat everyday, everywhere, and that's going to be awesome. As clichéd as it might sound, they really are changing the way we communicate.
- rgallagher27 12y agoIf the newest update is anything to go by (auto sending image as soon as it is taken) FB messenger is trying to get away from that
- jay_neyer 12y agoI think he's referring to lot of people that spend their time mindlessly sifting through their smartphone in order to avoid eye contact with a stranger.
- muppetman 12y agoDon't you mean taking the snap out of snapchat?
- jameswilsterman 12y agoI think this will be big, specifically the video aspect. Removes the biggest problems with video chat (Skype, hangouts etc.) feeling 'weird'. My immediate thoughts: A) Don't feel like you're getting roped into a long conversation (you have to hold down on the screen, so of course it will be short!) B) Doesn't feel like you are bothering people by calling them without knowing if they are free to videochat (they are clearly using snapchat at that moment so they're probably not too busy) C) No need to have something specific to talk about; can just say hi quickly and see what your friends are up to. D) As a bonus, if you are messaging with someone in the text interface and get to a point in the conversation where you need to communicate something complex, just use the video chat feature for 20 secs. and then go back to the more async g-chat style text messaging.
- gms7777 12y agoThe video aspect of it seems like a fantastic feature and I think your point A is very important. At least for myself, I have friends and family that are far away and I love to talk to, and would love to have quick chats with more often, except that when we start talking it ends up taking hours, so I'm hesitant to get into it unless I know I have the time to spare.
- izendejas 12y agoThat's the first thing that came to mind and I couldn't have said it better. I want to use facetime/skype with family/close friends, but it's just so awkward and cumbersome to get on a call.
- k-mcgrady 12y agoI like this. It'll give me a lot more reason to use Snapchat. Currently I've sent only a few snaps but I use Facebook Messenger all the time. If my friends started using this I would become more active on Snapchat.
- KhalPanda 12y agoI still can't believe they turned down $3bn.
- k-mcgrady 12y agoLook at how much Facebook paid for Whatsapp. Features like this new chat feature will probably help SnapChat grow a lot bigger - then Facebook will come back with a much bigger offer.
- sillysaurus3 12y agoCan Facebook afford a much bigger offer?
- adventured 12y ago$152 billion market cap. They produced $922m in free cash flow in Q1 and had $12.63 billion in cash at the end of Q1 (so they have plenty of cash as well). Zuck can use it all at his discretion. They could drop $20 billion on Snapchat tomorrow morning and there's nobody that can stop Zuckerberg from doing it if he thinks it makes sense.
- KhalPanda 12y agoMaybe. I can't think of much I could do with "maybe" $30bn, that I couldn't do with "definite" $3bn though! - A lifestyle programmer.
- ulyssesgrant 12y agoWell said. Pigs get slaughtered, too.
- jackvalentine 12y agoThe founder, Evan Spiegel, was born in to a rich family. He doesn't need to worry about a huge exit to make his buck in. It's in some ways nice to have a fun little app reject a huge corporate takeover and just keep developing in its own direction without any kind of cloud hanging over it.
- yefim 12y agoThis is amazing! I love the subtle swipe down to change from back camera to front facing camera.
- jerv 12y agoclearing messages when you leave the chat window will make people not use it
- pabb 12y agoNot sure why someone felt the appropriate response was to downvote you rather than voicing their disagreement. I think you're right. With WhatsApp picking up speed in my close friend circle, Facebook messenger being used for everyone else, and the occasional Google hangouts messages when I feel like being online, I don't think even taking the "ephemeral" approach is going to make a difference in persuading me to start picking Snapchat over competing platforms. Snapchat is fun because as other users mentioned, I get to send bullshit one-off joke snaps to my friends. I don't want to maintain a conversation of any sort through another app. However, knowing the conversation is immediately cleared further dissuades me. The point of this feature is that it's good for non-committal "conversations" and very easy to engage/disengage. But I already have WhatsApp for that, and I have group conversations there, and my messages aren't deleted.
- tbomb 12y agoSnapchat has always been more about the one-to-one messaging. Yes you can do one-to-many, but it still gives a more personal feel than a many-to-many group message. You had to click on that person to send it to them, you actively thought about them no matter how instantaneously. I use Snapchat for both very close friends and acquaintances too, I can send both inside jokes or just a simple hello to someone I haven't spoken to in a while. I don't feel an obligation to respond to snapchats and don't feel ignored when someone doesn't respond to mine, how I would via text, or facebook messenger. I personally never use facebook messenger. I've had it turned off for a couple of years now and only use it on the rare occasion that a friend changed phone numbers (friends moving abroad mostly) and even that is just to get their new number so I can use whatsapp or text messaging. As for whatsapp I strictly use it for large, on going, group messages or friends in other countries. But I guess everyone has their own use-cases.
- dayaz36 12y agoIt's not a coincidence that they are coming out with new features right before CyberDust is about to become big(they are coming to Android this month). I will switch to CyberDust as soon it comes to Android not just because it's better than snapchat functionally, but because it doesn't reveal the people you talk to most to the whole world. I know a lot of people that don't have snapchat specifically for this reason.
- jxf 12y agoI wonder if we need an update to jwz's famous quote [0]: "Every program attempts to expand until it implements user-to-user messaging. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones that can." [0]: http://www.jwz.org/hacks/ http://www.jwz.org/hacks/
- valevk 12y agoWhat would that update be? Or is "user-to-user messaging" explicitly text messaging?
- amirmc 12y agoThe original quote is about mail: "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can." Which itself may have been derived from an earlier Usenet quote about MIT [1] "Every program in development at MIT expands until it can read mail." [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski#Zawinski.27s_law_of_software_envelopment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski#Zawinski.27s_law...
- smoorman1024 12y agoThat's a poignant observation. Just on my front page, 5/20 apps can send direct messages.
- dang 12y agoJust as a clerical point, it would be better not to put a modified quote inside quotation marks. Currently, it looks like you're quoting the cited article when you're not.
- paulbaumgart 12y agoReally, the quotation marks need scare quotes, so you know they're just so-called quotation marks: "'"<modified quotation here>"'"
- jxf 12y ago
- higherpurpose 12y agoWhen are they going to put proper encryption into Snapchat?
- grrowl 12y agoThis is an interesting part — they're focussing so much on the product but the underlying protocol is still vulnerable to use outside of the app itself, leading the way to spambots, saving of snaps and general degradation of the "niceness" of the ecosystem.
- Dwolb 12y agoI'm pretty torn on this. In my main circle of Snapchat friends, we use the app to make creative messages for each other that can't be seen again. It's really special because it feels like we're all hanging out again back in college: we're funny, spontaneous, a little bit inappropriate, and outsiders just won't get the jokes. My own want for the update was to focus more on allowing us to express ourselves: give us easier and better tools to enable us to make messages more fun for each other. The feature could have been allowing users to record drawing strokes over a video or picture (sort of how Draw Something images presented themselves to the guesser) to give us another dimension to play with, time. Instead the app just moved toward the mainstream app features, which are all mostly the same.
- CaRDiaK 12y agoI was thinking this. How for example, besides a tweaked UI and the ability to draw on an image/video before sending, is this now any different to Wottsapp?
- ballpoint 12y agoI think the main thrust of the update is providing this ephemeral face-to-face 'meeting' of your friends throughout the day, as if you're seeing them in the corridor, just like college. The text chat seems to be more of a platform for facilitating that.
- jonchang 12y agoI suppose the natural follow up question is, how will this affect my Snapchat score?
- manzzup 12y agoReally? now starts a new form of vulnerability :3 personal stuff
- napolux 12y agoOn Android the Snapchat apps keep crushing. I know I have a fancy red phone nobody uses (I think it's called NEXUS 5 from a company named Goodle or Google, I can't remember). So, before putting new stuff in the app, please fix it!
- bbrks 12y agoSnapchat has long been unstable on the Nexus 4. For almost a year now. https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=67113 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=67113
- mklopets 12y agoNot a fan. Almost everyone I know has stopped using Snapchat. Its servers are god-awful - don't work 50% of the time here and people have got tired of seeing friends' sushi pictures & selfies 24/7. Also, choosing not to support Windows Phone (and apparantly not even recording WP users' requests) is a really stupid move in my opinion. Furthermore, I see no reason why Snapchat should be preferred over Facebook Messenger. If you want to share a moment with a friend, you might as well share it for more than 10 seconds. Messenger always works reliably for me. Snapchat doesn't. Case closed.
- mklopets 12y agoAlso, Facebook itself, not taking into account its Messenger, is dying out - 90% of the newsfeed is covered with posts from sites like The Verge or any other sites that you follow. The actual amount of stuff that you care about is 2% of it all. Can't honestly remember someone posting a legitimately interesting status update. Instead, I see selfies and news.
- sethbannon 12y agoDragging your video bubble from the top of the screen to the bottom causing a switch to the front facing camera seems like a really clever design decision.
- ballpoint 12y agoIt sounds like it might be a little RSI-inducing though, having to press your finger down all the time.
- untog 12y agoHow often do you flip in the average call?
- loceng 12y agoIt probably depends what you're doing with the caller ...
- sscalia 12y agoI'm gonna make an assumption that you (and many people on here) sit all day and probably don't exercise intensely regularly, eat healthily, or sleep very well. I don't think "RSI" by swiping on a screen is your most pressing health concern.
- LukeWalsh 12y agoYou already do this every time you scroll, it's no more RSI-inducing than viewing a standard webpage
- hemaljshah 12y agoReally cool design, I love the dragging of the bubble to choose a camera. This is starting to move away from the original value prop of Snapchat. If you can save chat bits, what's the difference in using any messaging service. Also, who usually is taking selfies or is using text message to talk to someone when they want to video chat? During most hours when you're on the go, you send asynchronous media since it's easier to create and digest that content from both parties. This feature won't add to the success that they've seen from their core product, just cause a nice little bump in traffic - not a game changer.
- bcaine 12y agoI would argue that a good portion of snapchats use happens in extended conversations (for example, flirting). Adding the ability to quickly drop into video to share something will feel pretty organic and add to the experience. It may not add to their original value prop, but it is a value add to the way people are actually using the product.
- pisarzp 12y agoThis is something that I was missing a lot! I like snapchat, but hate to take stupid pictures just to send message.
- zscho97 12y agoDoes it say when it is getting released?
- baby 12y agoAs a user I always found it annoying that I couldn't answer to a snapchat in the app itself (without taking a picture and writing something in it). I always had to go to snapchat or fb messenger to answer.
- changdizzle 12y agoAnyone know which video chat API they're using?
- notastartup 12y agolook at all those teens without credit cards liking the tumblr post.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- matznerd 12y agoSnapchat has an advantage in adding new features like this in that their user base is one of the trendiest groups out there. They are young, hyper-social, and early adopters who have very high affinity for the service. I believe Snapchat can get them to use new features like this, where others like the bigger, slower, and less cool Facebook, would not get the same type of adoption.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- Fasebook 12y agoThe technology of the internet sure has come a long way!
- finkin1 12y agoI'm not sure why, but it delights me to imagine Snapchat demolishing FB in the messaging wars, particularly after FB spent $19B on Whatsapp. I think these are some pretty awesome new features. I just got the update via Android, but my friends don't seem to have it yet. I'm excited to try it out, but I don't think I'll ever get completely away from Hangouts, since I use Drive/Gmail to run my startup.
- apl002 12y agoWorst Update Ever.
- Splendor 12y agoI think it would add more to the discussion if you explained your reasoning.
- theshadowmonkey 12y agoThere is no send button next to the chat. seriously? I type something and try hitting that button and it goes into video mode. And I also had the app crashing multiple time on iPhone 5s today.
- oliomel 12y agoIt's in the keyboard
- anjc 12y agoWhat's their differentiator now? Of course current users might say "great, another feature i want!", but, wont this just muddy their market position?