

Snapchat usage triples among teens in the last year - southkey
http://survata.com/survey-dashboard/shared/5JM962YV

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minimaxir
Only 300 teenage respondents? That's not enough to ensure such a conclusion,
especially when considering percentages of the whole.

According to the raw data download, there are 365 data points, but 104
answered "I don't use any of these" which are stated to be excluded, so the
actual amount of teenage respondents is 261?

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jordsmi
You defininately need more than 300. Also you need to make sure you have
people from different areas.

One school may be very facebook heavy while another may mainly use twitter.

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js2
Nevermind teens. I'm 42. I use it with my adult siblings, cousins and friends.
It's a delightful way to stay in touch. Sometimes it's a picture of my
breakfast, or the weather outside, or our pets, or whatever other amusing
moment is going on in our day that we'd laugh about if we were together. The
ephemeral nature of the pictures and the ability to scribble on them is just
delightful fun.

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chaz
This is exactly what makes Snapchat fun and addictive. It takes all the
friction out of taking photos and boils it right down. With Instagram, you
spend a lot of time taking the right photo, the right lighting, the right
filter, the right caption, etc. All of this is gone with Snapchat, because you
know it'll be gone. People are happy to share slightly embarrassing stuff,
like a mouthful of burger or no makeup.

Selecting who receives is easier, too, because you can uncheck some people.
Instagram doesn't have that option, I'd need to create a new list with
Facebook, and group texting is a lot more work.

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rlu
I agree with all your points re: taking the friction out of the equation.
However, I think it's more to do with the fact that you share with individuals
rather than to a feed that makes the difference. Not so much the fact that it
will sort of vanish after it gets viewed (less so now that they can get
replayed)

When you share to a feed you'e sending it out for everyone to see. You want to
know that people saw it and with services like Instagram and Facebook this is
done via commenting and Liking/Favoriting.

With Snapchat you fire and forget. No one needs to like the picture in order
for you to feel any sort of satisfaction. The only indicator you get is that
it was viewed at all - and with the sort of content that gets sent over
Snapchat, that's really all the information you need anyways.

TL;DR: I think the "choose indiciduals to send to" model is more important
than the "they get erased" aspect. Of course, the vanishing part of it is what
got Snapchat to become popular in the first place so it would be wrong to say
they would have seen the same amount of success without that feature. However,
at this point, I don't think that is what makes users keep using the service.

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arctus
Of course it did.

What's more appealing, a socially acceptable method for your girlfriend to
send nude photos of herself to your phone that are then removed (allegedly).

OR Facebook, which is just reaching popularity with your parents...

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rlu
No need for "allegedly". It is now a feature that Snapchats can be replayed.
Users are able to pick one Snap per day that they want to replay.

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plg
it has all the benefits of social media (instant, low-friction communication)
and none of the privacy concerns of faceboob, g+, etc.

unless of course we discover one day that snapchat messages all live on in
some secret db ...

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nathancahill
Considering that all un-viewed Snapchat's have to be stored, there's no need
for a secret db. I've heard a rumor that snaps are stored in memecache and
they are running in to scaling pains with the amount of un-viewed pictures
stored in memory.

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s_kilk
I wonder if they drop unread pictures after a certain length of time? it would
seem sensible and fit with the ephemeral nature of the mesdages

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mphillips2357
I'm still not sure if there's a way to justify the lofty valuations for
Snapchat that were discussed recently. Can anyone actually explain that well?

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nsp
A

