> Compared with Twitter or Facebook, Snapchat can seem almost aggressively user-unfriendly. If you’re new to the app and looking for posts by your kid, your boyfriend, or DJ Khaled, good luck. It’s hard to find somebody without knowing his or her screen name. This is by design. “We’ve made it very hard for parents to embarrass their children,” Spiegel said at a conference in January. “It’s much more for sharing personal moments than it is about this public display.”
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-how-snapchat-built-a...
Snapchat ‘16 was “confusing” because it didn’t hand hold you and a lot of features weee behind invisible swipes. The features were there, it was just hard to realize that they existed.
Snapchat ‘18 isn’t confusing. It’s bad because they de-emphasized everything about why people used the app and instead heavily pushed their own content. It’s practically a different app with a different purpose - it’s a tabloid rag rather than a social network.
Snapchat felt more personal than FB/IG, and I guess Spiegal saw all the celebs using the app and killed the goose trying to monetize that.
Otherwise, I (xennial) tried it twice and found the UI rather confusing.
It is depressing to me how low the bar is for our ability to learn an application. If the UI has more than a single list or button, it becomes "impossible to navigate". There was a time when users would expect some time getting to know their application and even, dare I say, read a guide or manual! Sometimes extremely powerful, creative, and useful tools will have a learning curve. Snap could offer some amazing capabilities, but because of this "simple is everything" mindset, they will face outrage if they expose anything beyond message passing.
It is completely nonsensical how Snapchat works. You have to swipe every which way and there's no clues when to swipe where. You just have to memorize the magical incantation to do what you want through trial and error.
We as a society have built up a fantastic 'language' of UI. We know what buttons and menus, etc do. Snapchat throws away all the ways you want to intuitively navigate and give you no clues about what to do instead.
The applications you are thinking of served preexisting needs, so it required more upfront complexity.
Something like Snapchat's UI does not have the burden of fulfilling a previously existing need. That is, until they redesigned it. Then suddenly, the new UI had to provide for a pre-existing need and as an obvious consequence, has been more difficult for both new and existing users.
Being unique or solving a purpose that's genuinely useful to its audience, doesn't seem to be a primary aim of businesses like Snapchat.
- Snapchat solves a unique communication problem (the desire to express yourself without it living forever). It still solves this problem today, however so do a lot of competitors.
Why not? You’re a highly evolved biological entity and you were from the very moment you were conceived! Evolution refers to your ancestors, not to any individual.
Due to a lack of overall direction and a common goal, teams are isolated in their own silos (which they're good at), but there's no cohesion. At the moment the company is reactive to competitors, not innovative and a leader in the space like what you could argue they were a few years ago
A unicorn is not supposed to fill a niche, it’s supposed to fight till death.
And not saying that this is wrong. After all this is how the society works.
There's probably a network effect — a couple of strong links in the friend group in that city keeps it going. I also wonder if usage in coastal cities is a leading indicator.
Wait, is this the same Snap that convinced people to share intimate pictures by making them inaccessible after a short while, but retains the right to store those pictures indefinitely and to use them for other purposes?
(Mostly-but-not-entirely rhetorical question, since I never used it and haven't looked closely into their privacy policies - so I might actually be wrong.)
(The fact that temporary photos can be quite easily screenshotted, photographed etc. is an unfortunate limitation, and something which many users may not realize)
There are places where it's legal to record your conversations when you go out with friends, and even whether it's legal or not it's incredibly easy to do. But good luck having much of a social life or even getting served in the local bar if people know you're always wearing a wire.
Instagram is only going to get worse with Mark Zuckerberg pushing it. Snap could still be an alternative if it focuses on what users want and keep what users may not want as optional or as a new app altogether.
We are curious about what others do. That's why reality shows and gossip magazines were so successful.
But the point is that by introducing Stories, Instagram provided this opportunity to spy on the lives of others. But also the opportunity to build a profile. This is important for anyone who has the ability to entertain others for longer, the influencers. And make others believe they could be that too.
Just saving a snap would not be enough. Snap would have to provide a landing page for each user that could be attractive enough for others to start following it. And some small clips is not so attractive, because you have to wait without doing nothing. In Instagram, in a few second rolling someone feed you would like it or not.
In addition, Instagram's search system improved greatly during this time of competition. While on snapchat is non-existent.
I don't look at anyone's stories anymore. The people I care about, I make time to hang out with them in person or call them when I miss them. You know, like people used to before 2010.
There I said it. I know I'm not alone.
I don't know about anyone else, but posting a story is the only guaranteed way to ensure I don't even check it.
That applies equally to Snapchat, instagram and facebook.
As a means of communication, it just doesn't work for me.
I love my work, my hobbies, solitude, family, analog lifestyle as much as possible.
At most saving the last 24 hours is just fine. I don't really see a need to keep everything forever and ever
It's likely that they making all apps alike to match most grossing.
The company is also weighing an option to reveal the identities of Snapchat users who make public posts
Of course, the irony is not lost on Reuters because just a few lines after that:
Snap is carefully weighing the privacy, technical and legal considerations of revealing user identities on public posts
So the way I read this is that Snap are giving up their transient nature and planning to become yet another platform for industrial grade stalking.
There is no reason not to skip to the next photo sharing platform because nothing is saved. It's a platform without a platform effect.
