Consider the following...
Use-ability First - Snapchat is about sharing pictures. So is Instagram. But when you open each app, what do you get first? In Snapchat it's the camera- quick and practically begging you to share something. Instagram puts your feed first. One wants you to create content- the other encourages you to consume. Snapchat's UI does a great job of layering complex power features under the simple one. Take a pic or video easily. Adding filters and emoji might take more know-how; but the core experience is preserved.
A Conversation, Not a Scrapbook - The thing that has long kept me from embracing Facebook was the permanence. While some people may want a digital timeline of every thought, feeling, and experience captured for all of posterity, I simply don't. Sometimes something is just funny or share-able now. I don’t want a copy in my camera roll. I don’t need to look back 10 years later to see what was said. It was a moment. And in a world where increasingly everything we do is documented forever, it’s kind of cool to have a place where you share a moment and then can move onto the next.
Making Money Without Interrupting - Perhaps what Snapchat is getting most right for users (and today’s update shows just how much so) is their ability to monetize by enhancing their experience; not by profiting from their contributions. Promoted stories and discovery brands are good; dare I say great. Because A) they aren’t forced, but instead made convenient B) actually have good content I am willing to spend time looking at and C) don’t turn me into the product.
In short, I consider Snapchat to be the “anti-Facebook” and I hope they keep going that way. I hope it’s what makes them a success. Because it’s surely what’s got me using them along side Twitter as my social apps of choice.
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