
Introducing the new Snapchat - hacker_user
https://www.snap.com/en-US/news/post/introducing-the-new-snapchat/
======
iambateman
Evan of Snapchat talks about “performing for your friends” as a strange “side
effect” of Snapchat. But the instinct to perform is native to the Snapchat
medium.

I think this is a problem.

I went to a concert a few weeks ago. The people beside me would stand still
for 10 minutes and then someone would pull out Snapchat. The whole group would
turn around, flash a smile and start dancing for the camera. 9 seconds later,
they were back to watching the concert.

Performance is a cultural virus that affects our happiness and creates a kind
of perfect self-consciousness. It’s “instant replay” for all of life. And just
like in American Football, when instant replay arrives, we start to (1)
glorify the spectacular, (2) hyper-analyze every angle and (3) expect more
moments worthy of instant replay.

Snapchat pushes us to create more of those “replay worthy” moments. We narrate
our lives according to the expectations of our “fans.” I hear 8-year-old kids
yell “do it for the likes.” They are quietly subverting their self while
sublimating the value of the crowd. How do I have an identity when I
consistently invite other people - often strangers - to affirm my experiences?

Those concert-goers felt the need to misrepresent their experience of the
concert. The 8-year-olds adjusted their behavior to optimize for likes. When I
was on Snapchat, I loved seeing _myself_ in other people’s stories. It made me
feel popular. I, too, adjusted my behavior to appear more likeable on camera.

Adjusting Snapchat’s interface will do nothing to address the intrinsic ways
that Snapchat reorients our relationships around performance.

Perhaps this is obvious, but family and friends should love me the way I am.
Not some imaginary version of me. And Snapchat nudges me to fake it.

~~~
gallerdude
I don’t know, isn’t this the same as all social media? I remember reading
something along the lines that playing golf is posted on Facebook twice as
much as doing the dishes, yet people spend 5x more time doing the dishes.

And if we step back from social media, what about regular pictures? They’re
supposed to take candid moments of the real world, but even if we’re having a
bad day, we smile and act happy for pictures.

I agree that a divide between reality and ideal is happening here, just that
it isn’t really new.

~~~
Govannon
>what about regular pictures? They’re supposed to take candid moments of the
real world

I'm not sure that is an accurate representation of photography as a medium,
nor has it ever been.

~~~
aesclepius
I profoundly disagree, documentary photography is as ever-present and ever-
useful as it has been.

~~~
xapata
What proportion of photographs are taken with that intent?

------
anant90
Teenagers, and for that matter, everyone yearns for smaller private spaces
where they can share whatever they want with their closest friends — without
any reservations of judgement from their parents, grandmas or uncles. I used
to love Instagram, until Facebook decided to make it Facebook v2 by making my
entire "friend" list follow me there as well. That means that until I invest a
lot of time hiding my story from everyone but my closest friends (and of
course no one has time for that), I'll just refrain from posting some of my
true self there.

On the other hand, the tight knit and private nature of the Snapchat network
is going to keep it more attractive to me. At least for me, the amount of time
spent in an app is more correlated with the depth of my relationships with
other nodes on that network, and not just with the size of my audience.

I’ve loved Snap as a company for a long time, and I like their pitch of using
innovation as a moat: they have consistently innovated every year since their
founding (Ephemerality, Stories, AR filters, Memories, Spectacles (although
this has largely been a failure)), have a core set of users who really really
love them, and are now playing to their strengths by positioning themselves
well as the private space for you and your closest friends.

~~~
finnh
This is a great post to read in comparison with iambateman's [0]. You prefer
Snapchat because it is a space where you are safe to be yourself, without
worrying about parents/uncles/etc seeing you. But iambateman's point is that
making videos for our friends is a performative event, and thus drives one to
(a) be different from your actual self (more funny/interesting/alive) or, at
the very least, to (b) act as you see yourself reflected in their eyes - to be
that version of yourself that they expect to see. To go all philosophy 101 on
it, this is more-or-less the basic question of existentialism, with Snapchat
acting as a multiplier for temptations to inauthenticity.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15807728](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15807728)

~~~
anant90
I totally see iambateman's point, and agree with it. As far as inauthenticity
goes, I would say that it pervades all aspects of our lives, including real-
life interactions, which we can assume to be most authentic, yet at some level
inauthentic (almost everyone changes themselves a bit depending on who they're
talking to).

On this spectrum, the Snapchat experience is a lot more authentic and closer
to real-life interactions than Instagram/Facebook, which are a lot worse
multipliers of inauthenticity.

~~~
__sha3d2
> As far as inauthenticity goes, I would say that it pervades all aspects of
> our lives, including real-life interactions, which we can assume to be most
> authentic, yet at some level inauthentic (almost everyone changes themselves
> a bit depending on who they're talking to).

An important and totally missed point! Nice one.

------
distantsounds
Android's Camera API has existed for _literally years_ to take high-quality
photos and these guys are still just taking a screenshot of the viewfinder and
calling it a day. It's been like this forever and Snap has refused to fix
this. I have yet to come across any other app on Android that utilizes the
camera this way. The photos are complete garbage.

And here they are, trying to add more 'features' into an app where its main
feature has been inherently broken since inception.

edit: this post kinda blew up. to see a real side-by-side comparison,
[https://imgur.com/a/wuaZi](https://imgur.com/a/wuaZi)

~~~
tartuffe78
As a near daily snapchat user, and someone who has developed an Android app
that use's the camera, I prefer it this way. I'm not using SnapChat to take
super high quality pictures, but to share moments quickly. The WYSIWYG works
well for that, and a lot of Android devices are super slow to take pictures.

Dealing with Camera 1 vs Camera 2 Android APIs, and device specific issues is
a mess, I don't blame them for taking the easier route. The iOS camera system
is a lot easier to develop against, so I blame Android for this rather than
Snapchat.

~~~
distantsounds
So you prefer gimping your photo quality because you're too lazy to learn how
the API works, and assume that your users are OK with this as well?

~~~
unfunco
Aren't the photos on Snapchat intended to be ephemeral? I'd be totally okay
with potato quality if I was sharing something quickly because Snapchat isn't
a photography app.

It's not as if Snapchat are a tiny company with nobody smart enough to notice
there's a camera API, this is intentional.

If you want to send a quality photo to a friend, there are apps for that.

~~~
distantsounds
"snapchat isn't a photography app"

you literally take photos and send it to people

~~~
badnew
Snapchat is to photography as passing notes in class is to literature

------
perfectstorm
They still haven't moved to the `newer` (not new anymore. been here for 3yrs
now) permission modals on Android. The moment I hit the Install button on
Google Play it prompts me to give blanket access to 11 different APIs. No way
I'm gonna let them have it.

Every app that I have on my Android device has been updated to this granular
permission modal and for Facebook I manually turned off permissions after they
started using the Storage permission to access my camera roll to display a
carousel of photos that I've taken recently on my timeline.

------
jkoschei
> The new Friends page to the left of the camera...

> The new Discover page to the right of the camera...

This reads like the manual to an early-90s text adventure.

~~~
karmelapple
As strange as Snapchat's UI is versus the standard mobile OS's UI guidelines,
there's no denying their unorthodox UI has been wildly successful. There's
definitely things to learn from their strategy.

~~~
m3rc
Really? Every friend of mine complains about the UI. Just yesterday a group of
friends (early 20's) were commiserating over how nothing in Snapchat made any
sense and just doing something as simple as getting to your friends list was
difficult and unintuitive, requiring a couple false starts where you use the
wrong swipe and end up somewhere you didn't mean to.

~~~
chrisdbaldwin
What if I told you that was part of the genius design? This "frustrating
design" forces curiosity out of users to discover the app for themselves and
encourages them to share these features with friends further augmenting the
network effect. Based on which semi-hidden features get shared/used the most,
Snap can A/B test faster than you'd imagine.

~~~
e12e
While I don't think the author thinks it forms an academic quality taxonomy
anymore, I do like the ideas in "Players who Suits MUDs":
[http://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm](http://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm)

Especially the idea that lack of friendly ux leads to more communication and
cooperation between players. I don't think it's completely unreasonable that
forcing network effects in "Mealsgate" (how do I even install pokemon go)
might help form stronger network effects - which in turn is what surveillance
machines/skinner boxes like snapchat needs in order to spread.

~~~
chrisdbaldwin
Snap's game is changing from getting people in the door to keeping them
inside. No longer do they need that network effect to get people in the door
-- they've escaped orbit. In fact, they're probably discovering that what
worked for getting people in is also driving people out, and they've probably
got someone with too much influence that is unwilling to accept that churn.

Yes, they can change their design for retention; do not expect it to work.

~~~
m3rc
I don't think you've provided any real evidence that it was specifically the
design and UI that sold people on the app. I started using Snapchat right
around their peak demo, 17/18, and I remember jumping on board because it was
letting me do something other social media apps weren't, not because it was
hard to use. The ephemeral nature of the content was exactly what I and my
peers looked for in a landscape dominated by public-persona builders like
Facebook, we didn't gravitate towards it because of the design.

You forget in your arguments about 'network' that literally every teenager
uses the thing. There is no exclusivity, no special bond between users. Your
entire high school would be plugged into the app.

------
eganist
The anti-social-media stance they're taking is probably well informed given
their target audience is growing a substantial aversion to oversharing on the
long-lived-net and would rather overshare on the ephemeral-net.

Their stock isn't necessarily enjoying it as much as they'd probably hoped. I
might speculatively buy in if it seems like it's not a Digg v4

~~~
bousaid
I just bought some - I’m considering snap another case of what Facebook went
through. Very well informed about their user, lots of talent working for them,
tons of users. However, I think their success will need to come from tailored
paid content (also read, they need to collect more data on their users).

Note: this is not investment advice.

~~~
eganist
Agreed.

Just to add clarity to my earlier post: I did pull the trigger and take a long
position in snap. We'll see how it goes; I've still essentially written off
the principal as a loss, but if there's an inflection point, I suspect it'll
be here.

(likewise none of my commentary here is investment advice)

------
orliesaurus
They realized that instagram's biggest enemy is the amount of advertising and
fake-accounts there is pushed into your stream of photos and are using it to
their advantage! clever :)

------
8x8squares
There is an interesting article by Dan Kaplan on _" Why Snapchat is Losing To
Facebook And The Strategy It Can Use To Win"_ [1]. It is an amazing read for
anyone interested.

In the post, the author outlines a strategy which Snap can use to regain its
relevance and importance in the social space. The author mentions how Snap can
rebrand itself as a "self-expression company" that respects users' humanity.

Interesting to see Snap taking steps in this direction.

[1]: [https://exponents.co/snap-facebook-key-competitive-
strategy/](https://exponents.co/snap-facebook-key-competitive-strategy/)

~~~
bllguo
Definitely interesting. It's an especially strong proposition these days, when
cybersecurity and privacy are so heavily emphasized. My main concern is that I
am not convinced that this route can be monetized. Wish the author fleshed
this out further.

------
therealmarv
Is this thing still a total bandwidth hog and downloading all snaps in
alphabetical order instead the videos I want to see? This app was unusable in
countries with low bandwidth like e.g. the Philippines. This is why Instagram
wins... Instagram is really really great engineering and testing. I would even
say it's one of the best optimized mobile apps out there.

~~~
gnodar
Go to settings->manage and toggle Travel Mode on.

~~~
Shalomboy
Seconding this. Took snapchat to Sulawesi and had no issues.

------
grenoire
Wait, what's even different? Serious question.

~~~
smcl
I guess that under the hood there are modes the camera can operate in - lower-
res "video" mode and a high-res "still" mode. When you're looking at the
viewfinder it's kind of a video - so it'll be lower res and presumably will
skip some corrections involved when a still is taken.

Edit: oops I thought this was in reply to a comment where someone complained
that the photo was taken from a screenshot of the viewfinder instead of using
the camera functionality. Been a long day :-)

~~~
rjpr
Where are you getting this from? Unless I missed something all they're doing
is moving around the menus a bit.

~~~
dbbk
I think they replied to the wrong person, the story here is that the menus
have changed.

------
richardknop
Just a personal anecdote but I have tried installing Snapchat app on my iPhone
about a year ago or so. I have spent about 20 minutes tapping and swiping
around the app to try to figure out how to use it. I couldn't get how it works
and was so frustrated that I have uninstalled it.

In addition to UI being most confusing and impossible for me to figure out, it
was also super slow on a mobile network in Asia where I was at the time, near
unresponsive.

If I, as 25-30 years old tech person cannot figure out how to use your mobile
app, you got a problem. I completely understand why the user base growth has
completely flatlined. I assume there are a lot of people similar to me.

I am very bearish on Snap.

~~~
jedc
If you go looking for the Snapchat S-1 SEC filing, it essentially has a user
guide for the app inside. (So that potential investors could figure out what
the hell it was all about.)

------
SlyShy
This seems like a solid response to Instagram eating their market share, as
Instagram suffers from exactly the problem described (of course, as intended
because Facebook's entire business model thrives on it).

~~~
mcny
I absolutely abhor and detest the way Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter mess
with my timeline. At least give me an option to sort everything in a reverse
chronological order -- no "tweets I may have missed" \-- by default. I hope
the left friends screen will not have this mess.

~~~
perfectstorm
For Twitter you can flip a switch to go back to chronological order (at least
on Android). The settings is called `Show me the best tweets first`.

------
wingerlang
I wonder why they made the video like they did. Essentially filming a filming
session. Like behind the scenes styled.

For a unique spin on it?

~~~
rwc
The same reason there are illustrations that appear on screen and there's
music in the background. Fundamentally, it's a boring topic (we moved our
menus around). So they spiced it up with some things that create interest.

------
V-eHGsd_
I'm certainly not in snap's demo, but

> You can think of it as a more sophisticated Best Friends algorithm that
> makes it easier to find the friends you want to talk to, when you want to
> talk to them.

I can't for the life of me understand why I'd need something like this to help
me find my existing friends when I want to talk to them.

~~~
askafriend
This is for mobile. The goal is quick access to the people you talk to often
without having to search.

This passes the "subway test". You're walking out of a busy subway station and
want to quickly take an action on the go - how fast can you get it done on a
tiny mobile screen with so-so connectivity?

On desktop, this is less of a problem when you have all the time,
connectivity, and physical dexterity in the world to perform searches rapidly.

~~~
V-eHGsd_
The default text message app has done this forever though, right? same with my
phone contacts if I want to be a luddite and actually _call_ someone

------
dmart
This is a nice, pro-consumer move, although I wonder if they will lose
advertising revenue as a result. One would have to imagine that one of their
big sells to Discover advertisers would be that their content is shoved in
your face whenever you try to view friends' Stories.

------
johnwheeler
Sounds like the old snapchat

------
ChanningAllen
Good move. It seems like a pro-consumer move that is also, and for that
reason, a savvy business move. Snap and Instagram as far as I can tell are are
largely used by young people who don't like the noise, visibility, and clutter
of Facebook. So this is an effective way for them to further distinguish
themselves.

------
kahlonel
There's going to be a nice little bump in their share prices. Not sure how
long that will last though.

------
ungzd
How innovative! Older chat "apps": ICQ, IRC, talkd, WinPopup always separated
"Publishers and Creators" and my friends! Furthermore, there was separate
device for consuming "Publishers and Creators" called "TV".

------
cercatrova
Nice, now I never need to swipe right. Wonder how they'll make money now.

------
dirtyfrenchman
Ok... so the app looks the same as it has for the past year? Not sure what's
new here.

------
_arvin
Introducing the new Snapchat: "Nothing's changed, except everything."

------
_pmf_
New Snapchat - same complete lack of a business model.

~~~
dbbk
Snap has multiple revenue streams, what are you talking about?

~~~
ljk
serious question, other than the glasses that no one is buying, the ads where
google and facebook take up most of the space, what do they have?

~~~
dbbk
They charge brands for special promotional filters.

They charge publisher brands to appear in Discover.

They charge users for geofilters for their own events
([https://www.snapchat.com/geofilters](https://www.snapchat.com/geofilters)).

------
Paraesthetic
Will it fix their declining user base though?

------
kalub92
Sooooo it's exactly the same?

------
losermachine
This is weak

