
Why I love Snapchat - cocoflunchy
http://justinkan.com/why-i-love-snapchat
======
goldenchrome
I don't know what to say. I think OP did a good job of explaining what makes
Snapchat so great, but their initial confusion and the confusion from the
commenters within this thread boggles me. Recently I was in a room with a
well-known VC who wouldn't believe a college student who said that they enjoy
using Snapchat, as if they couldn't comprehend how anyone would like it.

Virtually all the comments are about how Snapchat confuses them and that there
must be something seriously wrong with it. And yet the app is immensely
popular. If you're one of those people, then Snapchat is not really made for
you.

You might be able to understand why Snapchat is a beloved app by reading a
report about what the millennials are up to these days but I encourage anyone
dealing with this confusion to make an effort to talk to people outside of
your normal social circles once in a while. This kind of empathy with others
will make you much more effective when you're creating for people who are not
like you.

~~~
NDizzle
At a base level, I'm not sure why you'd do something to have it disappear. Why
would I write anything or record a short video that would self destruct?! It
seems like it's for meaningless stuff. If you follow that logic far enough
that means the whole thing is meaningless.

~~~
55555
Every real interaction you have in your life immediately disappears. Snapchat
is like actually talking with somebody.

~~~
welly
But why should interaction disappear if it doesn't have to? Snapchat is no
more like talking with someone than Facebook Messenger is, with the exception
that you get to keep your interaction with Facebook Messenger.

While I "get" your point, I think it's a stretch in terms of what Snapchat
offers that I can't get elsewhere with a better experience.

But then, I'm well over 20 and from the comments on this post, definitely not
snapchat's market.

~~~
lelandbatey
The reason snaps disappear is to enable one of the key effects of Snapchat
which is low-stakes social interaction. Users feel they can be more relaxed in
their interactions when they cannot be recalled later. To quote the article:

    
    
        There’s no public view count, follower count, likes count, or any other social
        dick-measuring contest. You can just put whatever you’re doing on Snapchat; if
        people don’t like it, who gives a fuck, you’ll never know. There’s no
        expectation of balling out 24/7.
        
        Consequently, on Snapchat I’ll post to my daily Story almost twice as much as
        I’ll post to Twitter and Facebook combined to reach only a fraction of the
        number of people. The cost of content creation is extremely low, and Snapchat
        makes it fun to think about what aspects of what I’m doing every day might be
        cool for other people to see.
    
    

Many people do feel social pressure to be "cool", to perform to the perceived
expectations of the groups they belong too. Given that, many people clamor for
"lower stakes" interactions. While the same "lowering of the stakes" could
happen at a social level, and I believe that is something that's happening
slowly over the long term, a much faster route is to use a tool that enforces
lower stakes, such as Snapchat.

If you are someone who does not find the appeal in low-stakes interactions,
then it's quite understandable that Snapchat may not appeal to you.

------
minimaxir
The problem I have with Snapchat is that there are many deliberate,
_counterintuitive_ UI/UX decisions which make the app hard to use.

This causes a lot of bad post-hoc rationalization from many startups that
"Snapchat is a multibillion dollar startup, and they have these bad UX
features, therefore if we have these X features we will be successful too!"

And thus the startup ecosystem as a whole gets dragged down.

~~~
nmat
The bad UI generates a sort of viral effect. I know a lot of young kids who
use snapchat and often the conversation starts with 'How did you do that
effect on that video?' or 'How do you send a text message without a picture?'.
Snapchat is one of few apps that has a lot of hidden features for power users
that are not explained anywhere. I am not saying that it is a good thing, but
it makes people talk about it.

~~~
dorian-graph
> Snapchat is one of few apps that has a lot of hidden features for power
> users that are not explained anywhere.

AFAIK, every feature is explained on Snapchat's website. Also when new
features are introduced, they've usually explained in the release notes on how
to use them—like when lenses were first added.

~~~
huac
That incentivizes people to explore the website/release notes to find these
things, and be the first to get a new filter/lens/hologram on their story

------
jmduke
I was about to make a snarky comment disagreeing with Justin -- as one of
those folks who can't deal with Snapchat, I think it's a weird encapsulation
of a lot of my complaints of newer social apps.

The UX feels deliberately confusing and disorienting; it promotes a culture of
manufactured intimacy; I have to deal with a bunch of software developers
thinking they're hip by saying 'bless up' and flooding their social media
presences with key emojis, as if a celebrity culture disseminated via Snapchat
is different than any other celebrity culture. I also don't really understand
how you can write an article saying Snapchat is unmanufactured and not a
"social dick-measuring contest" while using DJ Khaled as your main example
(and ending with an "add me on Snapchat!").

But this article is titled _Why I love Snapchat_ , and not _Why Snapchat is
the best_. And honestly -- I know a lot of people who love Snapchat. And
that's totally cool! Software that creates joy is almost always a net positive
thing, and even if I don't really dig Snapchat I'm glad that other people do.

It's okay to love software, even if its flawed or not the ~ _~ future of media
~_ ~ or whatever. I loved _Glitch_ , a game that hopefully Stewart Butterfield
will revive at some point. I love Reddit, even though I find a substantial and
growing chunk of its userbase/content to be somewhere between abysmal and
appalling.

(Just please, stop with the key emojis.)

~~~
Bahamut
Wholeheartedly agree - I spent 2 weeks at a friend's place just a week ago,
and my friend I was in became obsessed with recording videos purely for
Snapchat every time. Instead of focusing on the moment with friends, she was
more concerned with posting something on Snapchat for our circle to see.

I don't want everything I do blasted on social media - I want to enjoy the
moments I spend with friends. Snapchat is the opposite of living in the
moment, and that is my beef with it.

~~~
dorian-graph
> Instead of focusing on the moment with friends, she was more concerned with
> posting something on Snapchat for our circle to see.

Isn't this common with every social media app, relatively? It's the same with
cameras, writing down notes, and many other things. You need to use it wisely
and have a good focus on the right time and place, and amount of time too.

I use Snapchat a fair bit friends, but almost always not when we're together.
It's a low-friction and cheap way of just keeping in contact. Like when you're
walking down a street, see something cool and point it out to a friend.
Snapchat lets you do that when you're not actually together.

When I'm with friends and want to show something to other friends, I'll make a
quick photo or video, and then let it be. Again, you'll have some friends who
are on their phones too much, but that's not a Snapchat app problem, or a
physical camera problem, it's a user problem.

------
publicfig
Even though I've been pretty active with and supportive of Snapchat from the
beginning, I had always thought of it as a fad that would die off pretty
quickly. I also was quick to judge negatively any new features or modes of
using the app - such as chat, stories, filters, etc.- assuming it was diluting
the brand. At least so far, I have been incredibly wrong almost every time
(other than the payment feature, that never really took off to my knowledge).
It's pretty impressive how they've managed to not only stay relevant, but
bring people into a content sharing platform that was initially a novelty and
now a pretty major method of communication, at least with some people within
my social circles.

------
hendzen
I think the DJ Khaled's use of Snapchat in particular is genius. The
popularity of his Story feed really struck me when I was talking to a couple
high-school aged relatives earlier this week.

Me: "So do you have any New Years resolutions?"

Kid 1: "They don't want you to have resolutions."

Me: ??

Kid 2: "Resolutions are the key to success!"

=================================

After that exchange, I think there are going to be a lot of
musicians/actors/politicians making heavy use of Snapchat Stories in 2016.

~~~
xeromal
Can you explain that a little more? I totally missed that conversation. Haha.

~~~
owenversteeg
DJ Khaled commonly says things like "They don't want you to (insert relatively
normal thing here, like watering plants)" and then after doing that thing
he'll say "(thing) is the key to success!"

------
fastball
My reason for liking Snapchat is a little bit different.

I'm a user of Facebook, but I really don't like Facebook's newsfeed. I find it
to be a time sink that has a lot of advertisements and some amount of
cultivation is required if you don't want to be bogged down with every little
thing your friends do. So basically I only use Facebook for messaging people
whose phone number I don't have, and for event tracking, as a lot of people in
my social group use Facebook to make events, which I think is great.

But that leaves a small hole in my social media. I enjoy cyber stalking my
friends because I like being aware of what people are doing with their lives.
Snapchat (but specifically Snapchat stories) fills that need fairly perfectly.
Just once or twice a day I can skim through my stories for a few minutes just
to see what people have been up to that day.

I like it better than Twitter because there is too much promotion and general
posting of stuff I'm not interested in (like the Facebook newsfeed) and I like
it better than Instagram (for this purpose) because most users of Instagram
seem to want to only put their best / most interesting / etc. photos on there,
which isn't exactly what I'm looking for.

------
vdnkh
I wish Snapchat wasn't actively hostile to the WP market. They have outright
refused to make an app and when the third party app 6snap appeared (which was
quite good), they fought and had it removed. Rudy Huyun, the developer, even
offered Snapchat the source code for free. Evan Spiegel even went so far as to
mock the platform.

[http://www.windowscentral.com/how-you-cant-get-snapchat-
wind...](http://www.windowscentral.com/how-you-cant-get-snapchat-windows-
phone-whole-sorry-saga)

~~~
urda
Unfortunately it's their product and they can do as they wish with it. If this
includes not building it for WP, well that's life. 6snap wasn't their app, and
yes they had every right to have it removed from the WP store.

That's how the game is played, if one doesn't like it then don't use Snapchat.

~~~
city41
Conversely if apps are important to you, Windows Phone may not be the best
choice.

------
ethagknight
I love Snapchat Stories. I always have a minute's worth of video in my story.
I love it because, unlike Twitter, Facebook/Instagram and the rest, I can
overpost to my hearts content, and people can totally ignore it if they want
to. Most of my family does the same, and its fun to see. I can post videos of
my children doing stupid things that no one cares about or wants to see but my
parents and grandparents. Oh, thats another thing: when I tell people I love
Snapchat, they assume "heh, for sexting?" Well, no, my whole family, including
my 60 y.o. parents and 80 year old grandparent are on Snapchat and love seeing
videos of my family's activities or stupid stuff we do. The barrier for whats
acceptable to post is much lower, like toddlers running through the house
naked and whatnot. And it goes away. (well, probably not technically, so I
wouldn't post anything that you wouldn't be generally cool with accidentally
getting broadcast somehow).

But most the time, I post interesting-but-uncurated little snippets throughout
the day that I think are funny or odd, and I usually get a few random comments
from friends and family, and its generally fun, frictionless and competition-
less way to share without all the 'like' or friend quantifiers. Occasionally a
post gets upgraded to twitter for broadcast.

I also initially enjoyed the city stories, where random regular people from,
say, Doha or Abu Dhabi or Kuala Lumpur post videos of their daily lives. Cool
to see how people live on the other side of the world. Eventually got bored
with it, but cool concept.

~~~
angryasian
Out of curiosity, Im not user so this might be ignorant, but why can't people
ignore your posts on Twitter, Facebook/Instagram. Are you just referring to
notifications ?

I do get the point of the psychological barrier and the problem of
broadcasting likes, retweets, comments etc. I think some people will say "what
if no one responds" then why would I put this out there, and stop them from
putting out something that might be interesting.

~~~
ethagknight
Referring to core product, 'the feed.' I've had a terrible experience with
Facebook. The more i curate, the more it seems to send me cruft from people i
do not know. I started using Facebook back in 2004 when they opened up to all
college students, and it was cool to friend everyone I've ever met, so that
legacy certainly impacts my experience on FB.

With Twitter and Instagram's linear feed, I have to seasonally follow/unfollow
people (whom i care about and want to follow!) based on the current sport
season, they just had a baby, or whatever and they decide to binge post. Not
just once, but for a literal season.

Now, I use them all, and they all have strengths and weaknesses, but Snapchat
is the only one i really love to use. Its not a polar argument.

~~~
angryasian
sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but i still don't understand how its different
from going to a users profile directly on instagram or twitter, to see only
what they posted.

~~~
justin
That's not the default way most people use those services.

~~~
angryasian
Ok thanks, that makes sense. I'm just curious when snapchat has longevity like
twitter, and you have hundreds of people you're following their stories, how
that User experience will be different than twitter or instagram at that
point. I imagine, eventually they will need a way to curate the best user
stories or active user stories out of your list of hundreds.

~~~
justin
Snapchat works even better in this case, bc you'll still only tap the people
you are interested in.

------
altonzheng
I had a similar revelation a while back with Snapchat. Users complain that you
can't create groups to send to, you have to manually select each person. I
like this - it means when you receive a snapchat, you know that person
intentionally selected you to share a part of their life with. It adds a
subtle but meaningful quality to a message that could be considered spammy and
impersonal.

~~~
DarkTree
I completely agree with this. Every time I get a snap from someone who I'm not
super close with, I can't help but feel happy that they specifically selected
me. In return, I tend to send snaps to my fringe friends more often to let
them know I'm thinking of them as well.

------
ikailan
One thing that isn't mentioned is that the "friction" in selecting your
friends is actually a positive. Instead of someone just shouting out to the
world, my friend actually _picked_ my name to receive some post. Not to
mention: Snapchat has this built in status for how often users snap each other
back. It's a built-in mechanism to get me to respond, similar to the way
Facebook wanted it's "Sling" app to work, but without forcing the issue.

I used Snapchat with a very small number of good friends fairly heavily for
about a month. Things we shared:

\- what we ate \- walking to work \- on the bus/train \- waiting in line \-
nothing at all \- drawing on pictures of people - example: a friend is
watching ESPN talk about the owner of the 49ers, Jed York, and drew a dunce
cap on his head

I think we averaged 10 messages a day each.

Basically, for us, Snapchat was for sharing photos too stupid or personal for
Facebook or Instagram.

The stickiness eventually faded. We got tired of seeing the same food, the
same office, the same bus every day. Contrary to how we might represent
ourselves on Facebook (SUPER AWESOME!!!!), Snapchat showed each other how
utterly mundane our lives were. Of the original group of ~5 people, there's
maybe one left.

------
soneca
_" The cost of content creation is extremely low, and Snapchat makes it fun to
think about what aspects of what I’m doing every day might be cool for other
people to see."_

But what is the _reward_ of content creation?

Honest question. How do a user feel their effort in posting was worthy? I
never used Snapchat, so I don't get it much. Although I'm for sure not
dismissive as some, I just never tried it.

~~~
parfe
Maybe someone replies. Maybe they don't. It's a low effort way of saying "Hey,
I find this thing is worth 10 seconds of your time." My friend sent me a snap
of her niece throwing a temper tantrum. It was funny. I chuckled. It
disappeared. We got lunch weeks later, and I asked if her niece ever calmed
down. She laughed, we moved on. She got to share a funny moment in her life
with me (and presumably other people) because she thought I might be
interested.

If she posted on facebook? You'd have people asking what was wrong, giving
advice on how to calm a child, commenting about child abuse, and writing
essays about the ethics of posting children to social media. Whatever.

~~~
soneca
So Spapchat achieved what Path tried limiting friends? Real connections with
real friends.

Funny thing, went to Path.com now and find out two interesting things: i) they
have two apps at the same website now - Path, the social network and Talk, a
messaging app; and ii) they don't even mention the 150 friends limit anymore
(contrasting that it was the core feature and the epicenter of their launch
campaign)

~~~
parfe
altonzheng got it right I think when he wrote

    
    
      I had a similar revelation a while back with Snapchat. Users complain that you can't create groups to send to, you have to manually select each person. I like this - it means when you receive a snapchat, you know that person intentionally selected you to share a part of their life with. It adds a subtle but meaningful quality to a message that could be considered spammy and impersonal  

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10860501](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10860501)

Snapchat requires you to select who you want to see your snap. There's no
facility to push into everyone's feed. I'm not sending it to my "Friends" or
my "Family" without consideration.

You aren't going to click 200 people, or 150, or 50. You're going to think
"These five people really love hiking." Or "My cousins were talking about
adopting a husky." Or "Last time I burned bacon like this was with John and
Jane."

Saying "you can only have 150 friends" wasn't the key to a more personal
experience. It just meant there was a hard limit on how many people could spam
you. The key for me is the tiny marginal cost of sending something to N+1
people, so instead you choose more thoughtfully.

------
goeric
Great post from somebody I respect tremendously. One thing I feel like he
didn't touch on, which I feel like is most important, is that there's no
public comments on Snapchat. People post without much need for validation and
without fear of backlash.

~~~
justin
Good point! I didn't think about this much specifically.

------
bshimmin
Is there a strong overlap between "people who don't know (or care) who DJ
Khaled is" and "people who are unlikely ever to see any value in Snapchat"?

~~~
squeaky-clean
I've heard his name before, but no idea who he is. I also don't have anyone
added that I don't know personally. I don't care if some celebrity is watering
their plants or getting coffee, but when my friends post that, it's more
enjoyable than I ever thought it would be.

~~~
askafriend
I don't think you quite understand the power of DJ Khaled.

------
zo7
I'm surprised that there's so much "I don't get it" sentiment here. You would
think that everyone on HN would be clamoring to figure out how Snapchat is
able to get as many users as it has.

~~~
dorian-graph
The reactions here seem reminiscent of Svbtle—people felt off socially (with
Svtle, they weren't invited, and with Snapchat, they might be feel like
they're missing out on what the cool kids are doing).

------
duderific
> the content doesn’t have to be that good, because it is going to disappear
> anyways, and everyone else’s content isn’t that great either.

That makes me want to sign up right away!

------
fascinated
I love that 2016 is when many notable SV people finally got excited about
Snapchat

~~~
justin
I know -- I think I'm actually a late adopter.

------
dreamdu5t
Snapchat is great if you have a group of friends who care about seeing random
photos of your life throughout the day. What exactly am I supposed to "snap"
while I'm sitting in an office all day staring at a computer? Take photos of
my food? I don't understand how to participate when my life isn't filled with
visual things to show people.

~~~
justin
I just narrate the boring shit I'm doing

------
gt565k
They've added some interesting features like stories from your city or events
near you which are a subset of videos hand-picked from different people who
submitted them for that event/location. This is really handy if you want to
get a sneak peak into some event near you that you were unable to attend.

In addition, you can do real time face-to-face video chat, just like face-
time. They've also been pretty smart about the implementation of it. If 2
people are snap messaging (not video, just text) and they both have the chat
window open, the snapchat camera icon would start glowing blue, signifying
that you can initiate a face-to-face video chat with the person.

------
mdevere
Ok I'm watching stories now and it's awesome. thanks justin

------
jonknee
I've had a similar experience, opening the app a couple times over the years
and never using it in any way. I just don't get it. Maybe it's time for
another try.

~~~
ehaughee
Personally I find my enjoyment requires a group of friends that enjoys what I
send and I enjoy what they send for the most part. So it can be a chicken and
egg problem for sure. I've unfriended friends on Snapchat because I don't want
to see pictures of their food. However, as I don't have a facebook, I find
that Snapchat can keep me closer to my geographically remote friends in an
wonderfully informal way. There's no "Heyyy! How are you?" followed by that
forced how's life exchange of meaningless small talk. I get a pic of a friend
on a rooftop bar and I know she's alive and having a good time.

As someone who initially thought Snapchat was stupid, and doesn't typically
engage in social media, I get that someone could dislike it or not see the
point. For me, Snapchat fits a niche in communication I didn't know I had.

------
cookiecaper
I think I'm supposed to be too young to get that deeply irritated "stay off my
lawn" feeling but Snapchat provides it in leaps and bounds. Lots of resentment
here for Snapchat and the other useless "Hey, look ma, I'm worth a billion
dollars!" unicorns lead by clueless collegiates that are always photographed
wearing mom jeans and smirking into space.

I had just barely started to accept Twitter's presence in the world and now
this.

------
zyxley
Snapchat is the first app that makes me feel like an old man shaking my fist
at the young hooligans on the lawn. The abtruse interface leaves me
tremendously baffled.

------
skeletonjelly
I didn't realise how ubiquitous it is until I went to a music festival, every
phone that was held up recording a particular act was using Snapchat.

------
bambax
> _There’s no public view count, follower count, likes count, or any other
> social dick-measuring contest_

And then at the end:

> _Add me at: justinkan_

Why does he need to be seen by strangers if the whole point is to exchange
"low quality content" between friends??

That said, the concept of "linear channel" is interesting, even if I'm not
sure I understood everything about it.

~~~
justin
I like getting feedback. Also I broadcasted my life to strangers and it worked
out well the first time -- we turned it into a billion dollar company.

~~~
bambax
After "pivoting", no? Or did you sell footage of your life for that amount?

------
anotheryou
I'd really want to try, but when I need to scroll to see the end of the list
of permissions it needs, I refuse to install it...

------
applecore
_> Instagram is the 9th circle of hell where everyone feels inadequate about
their photos of bottle service, Michelin star dining and helicopter rides._

OT: That's... an interesting take.

------
Splendor
I also grew to love Snapchat over the last few months. But then I got a Nexus
5X and the Snapchat app performs so poorly on this device that I rarely open
it any more.

------
tempestn
For anyone who's used both, how does this Stories feature compare to Twitter's
new Periscope? They appear to aim for very similar targets.

------
taytus
"There’s no public view count, follower count, likes count, or any other
social dick-measuring contest. " He adds his account so people can follow him
:/

------
is_this_tinder
"then it disappears"

------
dharma1
This post makes me think I should check it out again. A lot of our
([http://unikupid.com](http://unikupid.com)) users in India are on snapchat,
thought it's just a teen fad but maybe it's fun to use

