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Why I passed on joining #SnapChat.
Nov. 13th, 2013 11:34 pmSnapChat, for those of you not familiar with it, is a photo- and video-sharing service for Android and Apple devices. Much hay has been made recently that teenagers are turning away from FaceBook and towards SnapChat; then came news that SnapChat turned down a $3,000,000,000.00 (yes, that's three billion dollars) offer from FaceBook (Slashdot has a discussion here). Clearly, this is a hot commodity, and so I went to check it out. Having checked it out, I have decided to pass. But I can see its appeal. In fact, I admit that my passing is a sign that I'm getting old.
The main feature of LiveJournal, for me, is permanence. I can look back on my LJ going back to when I started it, and it's like reading old diaries and seeing old photos. I can convert my entire LJ to a book (as of now it's over 6000 pages long). John Crow, back when he was using LJ as his primary blogging platform, used to speak about saving each year of FaceBook into a book. The flip side is that I'm accountable for everything I've written unless I restrict my audience. This is why I post my predictions here, in fact; so that people can go back during the year, review them, and judge how I've done. (By "people," I mostly mean "me" right now. Such is life.)
The main feature of SnapChat, meanwhile, is that the photos and videos don't last. They disappear within seconds of being seen from the receiver's screen. SnapChat stories, a new feature being rolled out by the company, have a montage of photos and videos, each of which have a lifetime of 24 hours. It's about the ephemeral, claims the app sales language. Or maybe it's about lack of accountability.
Snapchat's user base is young. Younger than FaceBook's. Therefore, younger than LiveJournal's. And I'm thinking that it's that quality of impermanence, ephemerality, lack of accountability, that appeals most to the younger generation. If so, that speaks to an interesting generation gap.
Edit: Come to think of it, 4chan uses a similar model.
The main feature of LiveJournal, for me, is permanence. I can look back on my LJ going back to when I started it, and it's like reading old diaries and seeing old photos. I can convert my entire LJ to a book (as of now it's over 6000 pages long). John Crow, back when he was using LJ as his primary blogging platform, used to speak about saving each year of FaceBook into a book. The flip side is that I'm accountable for everything I've written unless I restrict my audience. This is why I post my predictions here, in fact; so that people can go back during the year, review them, and judge how I've done. (By "people," I mostly mean "me" right now. Such is life.)
The main feature of SnapChat, meanwhile, is that the photos and videos don't last. They disappear within seconds of being seen from the receiver's screen. SnapChat stories, a new feature being rolled out by the company, have a montage of photos and videos, each of which have a lifetime of 24 hours. It's about the ephemeral, claims the app sales language. Or maybe it's about lack of accountability.
Snapchat's user base is young. Younger than FaceBook's. Therefore, younger than LiveJournal's. And I'm thinking that it's that quality of impermanence, ephemerality, lack of accountability, that appeals most to the younger generation. If so, that speaks to an interesting generation gap.
Edit: Come to think of it, 4chan uses a similar model.
