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How Many Snapchat Clones Does It Take For Facebook To Lose Its Self-Respect? (theguardian.com)
Alex Hern, writing for The Guardian: Over the past year, Facebook has shown an almost monomaniacal dedication to taking on Snapchat by importing its defining features wholesale into the company's own apps. Facebook Live has "masks" now (think Snapchat's Lenses). Instagram has geostickers (like Snapchat's location-aware stickers.) WhatsApp has "Status" (think Snapchat Stories). Instagram has "Stories" (think ... Snapchat stories). The latest fruit of Facebook's labours is Messenger Day -- "a way for you to share these photos and videos -- as they happen -- by adding to your Messenger Day, where many of your friends can view and reply to them". It's Snapchat Stories. Again. [...] Facebook has seen potential threats on the horizon before, but its chequebook has always been enough to ward off real danger: that's why it bought Instagram, that's why it bought WhatsApp, and that's why it tried to buy Snapchat. But it couldn't get the company's fiercely independent co-founder, Evan Spiegel, to sell. And now it's in uncharted waters, with a competitor stealing advertising revenue, desirable millennial users, and industry credibility, and with no obvious way to reverse that trend. Facebook's time at the top probably isn't up. But its self-respect deficit is going to take years to pay off.
Bearing in mind what it is and what it does, self respect is obviously not high in Facebook's agenda.
Do you think the average teenager or soccer mom who uses these features actually cares who invented what first? They are not reading these stories, they are not concerned with abstract hand-wringing. They just care if the platform they use does that cute little trick where they can overlay a cat nose on their face in realtime. Facebook knows this. They are appropriately more concerned with their bottom line than with the opinion of tech journalists. I just don't see the point. Competitors in every industry copy each other and try to one-up each other. that's the whole point. If you feel you are losing ground to X competitor because they rolled out Y new feature, you're going to also roll out Y new feature and hopefully add Z innovation on top of it, and X competitor may copy Z new innovation back in return. Why single out the feature arms race of social media?
So... I ragequit social media. All of it. People who are important to me have my phone number. They can call or text.
I don't really understand this. I've seen several friends go through cycles of this, where they quit some network, delete everything, and then (usually) end up coming back a few months later, and having to rebuild all those connections.
Why not just stop actively participating? Remove the apps from your phone, update your settings to limit/disable the flood of notifications, and just let it be. You can update your social network page (whatever one you're mad at for the moment) with a note that friends should call you and that you may not respond to messages, or something along those lines (wonder how many have a simple auto-reply function, like for when you're on vacation?). Doing this means people that may have lost your number (or other contact details) can still find you if they need you, and vice-versa.
It's more work to fully quit than it is to just walk away, and it's not using any of your resources, so why care?
If it were all about privacy, then you probably wouldn't be on there to begin with. In this case, you even said it was because of all the other useless-to-you features that were being added to the app you were using - so just stop using it.
PS. if you did simply stop using it, then nevermind anything I said.... but if someone else has some insight on that, I'm curious.
I agree with your assessment of Snapchat. We're too old to understand it. Best I can do this conversation with my niece (13 y/o).
me: why do you use Snapchat?
niece: everyone is on it. Why aren't you using it?
me: can't you do the same thing with Facebook Messenger or any of the other chatting programs? I mean some of these "cool" features have been since ICQ and AIM.
niece: I-see what? You're a dinosaur like my mom, you still have a Facebook account.
me: you don't have a Facebook account? But you have an Instagram account that's own by Facebook
niece: yeah, but I only use the Instagram to read the stupid things people do like this "guacamole lady". I never post anything on Instagram.
me: so you use Snapchat because it's not Facebook?
niece: kinda, but mostly because the stupid things I say and do probably won't come back to haunt me when I use Snapchat. Messages disappear. And aren't you the one telling me to scrub my online present and watch for my privacy.
me: (teary eye..she actually listened)
niece: I have a school fundraiser
me: damn it, here's a $20 get some chocolate for yourself
TL:DR version: people use Snapchat because messages disappear, network effect and it's not Facebook.
Come to think of it, "it's not Facebook" should be enough reason to use anything.
Thanks for the perfect explanation. :)
Only one piece of software is allowed to have a given feature.
No it's not that, it's that facebook is engaging in a bunch of desperate and shameless catch up which kinda looks like scrabbling after they failed top buy snapchat. Now, facebook is going to remain an 800lb gorilla and, well, I've no idea if snapchat will succeed or fail: I don't get social media and that renders me unable to make any kind of informed prediction about it (when I heard of instagram, I figured I could already do most of that on my phone but it sold for billions). I mean there was no wireless, and it had less space than a Nomad. Lame.
I also don't get why the famously fickle and poor 16-25 demographic is so incredibly sought after.
But whatever, they are, and snapchat seems to get them. Perhaps because the millenials aren't as stupid as old codgers like to make out and realise that the default of having messages disappear is much safer overall than the default of them staying around forever. Or, perhaps it's that they won't go on facebook because that's where their parents, teachers and other miscellaneous old codgers are.
Either way, facebook seems to be rather gracelessly scrambling after those users and as an avid miserable git, it's fun to watch from the sideline.
SJW n. One who posts facts.