

Snapchat is a fad, not a business. Do not glorify. - SuperPosition


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brianchu
A lot of people don't seem to get Snapchat, so I wrote a blog post about it
here: [http://www.brianchu.com/blog/2013/09/11/photo-
embarrassment/](http://www.brianchu.com/blog/2013/09/11/photo-embarrassment/).

Have people actually met/seen others using Snapchat? I'm in college so tons of
my friends use Snapchat regularly (about every couple of hours). Snapchat is
essentially used for picture messaging of frivolous images, almost like a
picture-status-update of something funny or current. Nobody I know really uses
it for "dirty" pics, though unflattering pics (of yourself or others) are
fairly common. It's almost a foil to Instagram - Instagram encourages you to
post by making your photos permanent but beautiful; Snapchat encourages you to
post by making your funny/ridiculous/unflattering photos ephemeral. See the
difference? It's ephemeral vs permanent, funny/ridiculous vs beautiful.

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telephonetemp
I found your blog post insightful. Consider submitting it as a story on HN.

Has any of your friends run into the problem of the expected privacy of their
photos being compromised and the photos reposted elsewhere?

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dzink
Facebook, Twitter, and the sort hold on to content in perpetuity and content
is monetizable. In this case, other than a network of friends who would be
embarrassed with you, what is left of Snapchat after the first "My stuff
wasn't really deleted" scandal? An "I have all of your dirty photos service"?
Could their users just jump onto another "delete everything" app?

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zxcvvcxz
As much as I'd like to agree, Twitter is about to IPO. So empirical real-world
data suggests otherwise, that it's not a fad, and just because I don't get it
doesn't mean that others don't derive enough value from it to be a business.

Boy, being an investor must be hard.

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coralreef
I'm sure people were saying the same things about Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, Pinterest, etc...

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joeldidit
True, but if they are smart (which they don't seem to have enough of), then
they can turn it into a business.

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lechevalierd3on
Are dickpics ever going to go out of style ?

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argumentum
SnapChat's success is a huge reminder to start by _making something people
want_. Ever since watching Mr. Gadget, the idea of self-destructing messages
seemed _useful_ not just for cartoon spies, but for _so many_ ordinary
reasons.

I'm not a user of snapchat, but to my college age cousins, the value isn't in
"sexting", though that happens, it's in the intimate, momentary connection.

This is the same reason, for aesthetic reasons, why I prefer not to take
pictures of famous buildings & landscapes. I _know_ I was there .. it's
imprinted in my mind and I can go back and explore that experience with my
imagination. I don't only visualize, but I smell, I hear, I feel what it was
like.

Snapchat captures that zeitgeist, whether the experiences was funny, intimate,
sexy, embarrassing, cool, awe-inspiring or sad. It then goes into history,
save the shared mindspace of 2.

That's something people want.

