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Snapchat Is Becoming the Anti-Facebook (qz.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: Snap announced today (Nov. 29), that it was rolling out a redesign for Snapchat that's intended to separate users' feeds between their friends from the brands that publish content on the app. Founder and CEO Evan Spiegel published an op-ed in Axios this morning about the direction that social media has taken over the last few years, where content from brands and influencers has been given the same weight and placement as content from friends and loved ones in users' feeds. Spiegel also took to YouTube, for the second time in about two years, to explain how the new Snapchat works.
The new structure seems like a positive move. It's sort of solidifying the app, which turned down $3 billion from Facebook in 2013, as the "anti-Facebook." Facebook has muddled the line between content, news about friends, and pure internet garbage to the point where it's become nearly impossible for the average user to know what's important, or even true -- on purpose. Snapchat is reaffirming the value of staying connected to your friends, and enjoying news and entertainment content, but showing that the two activities should not be the same thing. Whether this restructuring will convince more people to start using Snapchat, however, is unclear.
The new structure seems like a positive move. It's sort of solidifying the app, which turned down $3 billion from Facebook in 2013, as the "anti-Facebook." Facebook has muddled the line between content, news about friends, and pure internet garbage to the point where it's become nearly impossible for the average user to know what's important, or even true -- on purpose. Snapchat is reaffirming the value of staying connected to your friends, and enjoying news and entertainment content, but showing that the two activities should not be the same thing. Whether this restructuring will convince more people to start using Snapchat, however, is unclear.
When I think of SnapChat, I think of "that skeezy service that enables pre-teens to share nude photos of themselves with each other without leaving evidence behind" (since photos you take with it automatically disappear after a short time).
If they're truly redesigning the whole thing to be a "better Facebook than Facebook"? Great -- but they've got a bad reputation to shake off first.
Right now, I really get the feeling that the younger crowd has migrated to SnapChat only because their parents are all over Facebook, making that an automatic "non starter" of a social media option for many of them. (Nobody wants to have a discussion with friends about the opposite sex or a party they attended or what-not, and suddenly have mom or dad, or grandma pipe up in the middle of it.)
But really, Facebook has a far more established service. Features like "memories" that automatically recall and feature old photos you posted and forgot about add more value for people than a service that treats them as disposable.