
Snapchat's decline and the secret joy of internet ghost towns - paulpauper
https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/18/17366528/snapchat-decline-internet-ghost-towns
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natrik
_One of my friends who is still resolutely on Snapchat has told me that it
gives her, “a space to be visible just to some people, to not have to share
everything with everyone in order to share anything with anyone. That, to me,
is too high a cost, and it’s a cost that so many other platforms require you
to pay.”_

One of the main reasons why I still use Snapchat.

~~~
jamesb93
What I don't understand about snapchat is its functionally useless. Me and a
small group of friends send funny images and like the silly bitmoji's but we
never have a proper conversation on there or exchange anything of value. I
don't really see it as a true social media.

~~~
aplummer
What you just described (useless jokes) is not useless at all!

~~~
toomuchtodo
It’s certainly not a business.

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newfocogi
I just asked several friends, all millennials, if they thought snapchat use
was declining among their friend groups (semi disparate), and all said no and
were surprised I asked. Obviously a biased sample, but just another data
point.

~~~
argonaut
As a millenial myself, I've seen Snapchat usage stay roughly the same, but
I've seen an _explosion_ in Instagram usage. So IMO it's really just that
Snapchat is stagnating relative to Instagram, and stagnation is death for a
social network.

~~~
whymauri
I'm convinced the death of Snapchat will be its failure to expand to new
international markets like South America. Insta, FaceBook, WhatsApp, etc (all
FB owned) have exploded and maintained themselves overseas. Meanwhile, a year
ago reports came up that Evan Spiegel of Snapchat said that his app is not for
poor countries like India.

That hubris is dangerous. I can't wait for the company to go under.

~~~
woolvalley
India is fairly unique in how bad the cell phone internet is. Snapchat is a
video & image heavy app even compared to instagram or facebook, which is why
the app design doesn't work well. Get rid of the media richness and your back
to facebook.

~~~
0max
When I visited my family in the Philippines, I was asking my younger relatives
what social networks/apps they used. When I asked about Snapchat, they said
nobody really used it. It made sense in the way how data plans are structured
over there, along with how Facebook's Internet.org has really gained a lot of
usage in the country in their partnership with the carriers.

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thought_alarm
Back in the 2000s I was probably the only one in my friend group who had any
sort of presence on the internet. There was no way I could convince any of my
friends to start a blog or join LiveJournal. Even sites like Flickr was a
stretch.

Instead there were some old ICQ accounts that no one used anymore, and
occasionally someone would send out a group email with some photos attached.

And then it's 2007, Facebook appears out of nowhere, and suddenly all of my
friends are sharing like mad on the internet, as is everyone else.

My first impression was that this is great. Finally my friends are on the
internet. Facebook is like Internet for Dummies. Six months later I would
deactivate my Facebook account.

I do miss LiveJournal though, or at least the idea of it.

~~~
oldcynic
So do I. Made a few very close friends via LJ. All non technical oddly enough.

Up til that point, people would type. If they were having a bad time they'd
type A LOT. You couldn't help getting to know them better than you did.

Then Facebook etc arrived, and now it's "Life's shit. Inbox me", if that, or a
photo of lunch/cat/coffee.

I think we took a wrong turn somewhere along the way.

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ArtWomb
Another "secret joy" is getting in early to new networks before the brands
come rent seeking. Telegram communities have this feel, though many are invite
only. Mastodon may be the next big one, and has a bit of an early Tumblr vibe.

~~~
jamesb93
I really find Mastodon really empty. I had a look and the first things that
popped up into my federated feed were escorts.

~~~
CrystalLangUser
It depends on where you look and who you follow. Swifter.at became a refuge
for sex workers and is one of the larger instances.

However, you can filter instances, and/or sign up on an instance that blocks
switter users.

There is activity, especially if you sign up on a huge instance like
mastodon.social (although I don’t recommend this). instances.social lists all
active instances that you can peruse through.

~~~
18pfsmt
Is it easy to run your own instance and be highly selective about federation?
How about not being listed on lists of instances?

~~~
CrystalLangUser
It's easy to run your own instance. Mastodon provides a docker image, provided
you have a server or VPS that can handle its asset compilation. I think you
can get by with 2gb minimum. You can filter any instances that you don't want
to federate with.

I'm not sure what you mean about not being listed on lists of instances. If
you mean not federating your own instance, well, that goes against the entire
premise of the fediverse / federation. Running your instance means it will
propagate. Your posts will show up in the instances of whoever is following
you.

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newscracker
If the allusion here is that Instagram is a lot better, anecdotal experience
of one person suggests that Instagram is no different. More people seem to be
creating Instagram accounts to promote stuff or to create a brand.

People tend to follow many others just in the hope of a Follow Back or getting
more engagement on their posts. It's like Twitter all over again. The number
of likes that posts get seems to be extremely low compared to the number of
followers (except those who are celebrities of some sort or were already
famous for something). The likes also tend to be done with an expectation of
getting more likes. What's worse than the number of likes? That'd be the
number of comments. Most people's posts, except those of a personal nature
intended for (real) friends, tend to get no comments at all. It looks like a
ghost town. Or rather, a zombie town, with the inhabitants chanting "follows",
"likes", and so on.

There's way too much content, way too small screens to consume them on (photos
and videos), and way too less time for it all.

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joejerryronnie
Every young person I know and see around me in general is using snapchat as a
primary means of communication. The real user base is not boomers, gen-xers,
and perhaps not even millennials but rather gen z. As such, it will take some
time for them to grow into their full earning potential as a generation. If
snap continues to innovate and meet the needs of this user base, they could do
very well in the future.

This also assumes snap hires people who know how to run a successful tech
business. They may need to move their HQ and primary strategic operations away
from LA and up to SV or SF to take advantage of the concentration of tech
talent (not just devs but execs, sales, product mgmt, devops, marketing, etc).

~~~
bitpush
I find this hard to believe (I'm not doubting you, your experiences are valid)

Snapchat used to be where gen-z were, but now with Instagram "adopting" the
story format it became easy for all those folks to post stories on IG itself.

~~~
joejerryronnie
They are using IG and snapchat for different things. These two apps are not
seen as mutually exclusive.

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KasianFranks
Another example of the transient nature of social technology companies (aol,
friendster, myspace, facebook, twitter [fill in the blank]) compared to
algorithmically founded technology companies (Google).

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skybrian
I use Google Plus in a similar way, except as a link blog. Hardly anyone is
listening. At first that was a concern, but I've come to enjoy it.

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olivermarks
Remember the echo in Apples old 90's social network eworld? There was never
anyone there, it was like being in an empty shopping mall

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paulie_a
The amateur porn sharing platform tried to expand it's scope too much.

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pram
I still can’t believe you can’t look at Snapchat in a browser/desktop, makes
it useless for me. Instagram is far more accessible.

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vackosar
urbex of the web?

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fjsolwmv
Is Snap considered a doomed failure now? It got to IPO and tanked, did early
investor/owners effectively bilk the sharebuying public?

