Snapchat - What's It All About?!

We are not down with the kids. We are not trend setters. We are not ahead of the curve. We are not trailblazers or early adopters. If anything we are slightly slow to notice anything particularly cutting edge - ironic as I work in an industry that likes to think it is the next big thing or at least has the next big thing.

That brings me to Snapchat. You have probably heard it mentioned. You may even know someone who has it - (especially if you associate with the youth of today) but having recently joined we thought we'd add our perspective.

Snapchat, in its simplest form, is another social media app, but rather than following the previous format that Facebook, Twitter and Instagram did to gain followers, likes, or friends, Snapchat is almost the opposite.

And rather than collating memories, Snapchat erases them - almost instantly with chats or within 24 hours on your 'story'.

It's a hard concept to get your head around - or it was for us - so at the start we had it down as an app to put all the 'not quite good enough for Instagram' pics. As you have to take the picture or video in the app, there is way less chance to edit them (not that we do that much on Instagram :D )

The messaging part is also super hard to get used to, you read a comment and just like that, it's gone. You can't go back and check it, you can't figure out what a reply is to and worst still if you actually click when someone is typing you erase the message - forever.

Or maybe it's just us - I just reread that paragraph and I sound like an old timer!

I think almost anyone who has chatted with us on there will have at one point had us request a message is resent - we are still learning!

Oh and then having a joint account is almost impossible. We have a joint account on all forms of social media because we aren't convinced we would update them enough if we had separate ones! While we easily and jointly update all other forms of social media, Snapchat logs us out when accessing it on each other's phones. That means only one of us can be signed in at any point and that we have to log in A LOT!

Add on the fact that you have to be online to post / capture (though I have found that you can capture it and try to upload and usually it allows you to upload when you are on wifi) and that it requires a ton of data and uses a lot of battery it is not ideal to use outside of the house. I am figuring out that is why fair amount of the content I've seen is in peoples homes.

Finding friends is also a challenge you have to add them by username. Sounds simple right but you can't search a username you actually have to know it - it explains why people are always publicising their SnapChat accounts on other Social Media - it's the only way to do it!

Having said all that we have found the point of SnapChat.

Within SnapChat you are shown stories - of people you follow but also of events, new and other things of interest. The Milan Fashion Show story was brilliant - it felt like you were there. The Oscars story was also brilliant, you got quick clips of the stars arriving the show itself, the after party - it was like watching a quick highlight film of the night. Actually that is exactly what it was.

SnapChat allows you to feel like you are really experiencing the life of the person creating the story. It's not glamorous, in most cases it's mundane clips of everyday life but it can be insightful. It takes the mask off  - it's no way as filtered as other forms of Social Media and that's why I am coming around to the idea.

In the case of our stories it has shown just how filtered our other forms of Social Media are - seriously SnapChat is 50% Bisbee - imagine if our Instagram or blog was the same!!!! But when the content is gone in a day we are less fearful of boring anyone checking us out.

Oh and you can download stories and pictures so don't have to lose it forever. Like these treasures:

And nope this isn't isn't one of us :)

Then there are the filters - have you seen the many faceswap pics, or the ones where you can become a dog or a drag star or a racoon or a snake or a unicorn or having a big nose, small mouth - okay you get the idea there are A LOT of filters and they change daily so your story could just be with different filters every day if you so wish.

There are tools to edit photos, emoji's, scores (based on how many people you share content with) and a host of other features but to be honest if you are taking it seriously then there are tons of user guides and blogs on it (ironic as Social Media is meant to be really simple to use :))

In our summary SnapChat is for those with time on their hands and a wish to share pretty pointless content with their SnapChat world and why not.

We will continue to use it for the time being - we have trips it will be cool to create stories for but it's limitations won't be making it a favourite App any time soon!

We may be alone though:
Snapchat has shown remarkable growth. From its debut in September of 2011 to today, the service has amassed 100 million users. In June of this year, its users sent 200 million photos per day. By September, two years after launch, friends were sending each other 350 million photos per day.  (http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/what-is-snapchat/281551/)

We'll leave you with this: