My mum is moving house. This means she’s going to chuck out a whole load of stuff from my and my siblings childhoods. Some of it has to be rescued. So I’ve recently taken home a huge box full of old photographs, looked through a few of them, got bored and stuck them in a similar cupboard to the one they’ve spent the last few years mouldering in.
Keeping loads of physical copies of old photos is a custom of the past. Uploading lots of photos to Instagram and Facebook is the custom of the day. So much so that complaints are manifold about too much sharing (who cares what you had for lunch and cute as your kids/pets/friends are please keep them to yourself). Some psychologists believe that if you’re taking a photo then you’re not fully enjoying the moment. Watching people watch their favourite music star at a festival through the frame of their iphone can seem a sad example of this. Then it is more about kudos from the photo or film that you can upload to your social network and share with your friends or review after the event than about participating in the event itself. The motivation to build a record of your life and a beautifully designed image can seem more important than living the moment.
Snapchat isn’t like that. Snapchat is spontaneous, impermanent and in its way contrastingly private compared to other social trends.
Beloved of teens everywhere it allows to you send a picture of what’s happening right now to a friend or friends which will disappear 3 or 4 seconds after its viewed (and will be deleted from the server). Of course you can find a way to keep the picture that you’ve been sent even though you’re not meant to but the sender knows if you do and if you are a real geek you can recover the deleted data but you’re not meant to. The picture is supposed to be grainy, un-posed, blurry and simply fun.
Snapchat represents a change in a couple of ways from the social media that’s been supreme so far. In a funny way it is more private. You will probably choose a select set of people, or just one friend, to send it to rather than posting for all followers. The image doesn’t last. You’re not constructing an image for your followers in the way that you can build for yourself on other social media. You don’t keep it, nor does the recipient and it is like a butterfly postcard of a moment in time.
Snapchat has its dark side of course. Yet it undoubtedly has potential as a comms channel for brands with the right profile and the right voice. Some teen brands are trying. Some teen brands are taking their time about venturing in for good cautious reasons. You may have noticed though that other social media has a dark side too. The commercial model for Snapchat isn’t clear at all to me yet, but there’s certainly an opportunity to win over lots of teens if a brand uses it appropriately. Also – it is fun. Give it a go. Doesn’t matter what you look like, no one will dig the image out of a cupboard decades later. Now you see it, now you don’t.
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on Thursday, August 15th, 2013 at 10:00 am and is filed under MediaComment.
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Millions of users – is it a stepchange in social?
Keeping loads of physical copies of old photos is a custom of the past. Uploading lots of photos to Instagram and Facebook is the custom of the day. So much so that complaints are manifold about too much sharing (who cares what you had for lunch and cute as your kids/pets/friends are please keep them to yourself). Some psychologists believe that if you’re taking a photo then you’re not fully enjoying the moment. Watching people watch their favourite music star at a festival through the frame of their iphone can seem a sad example of this. Then it is more about kudos from the photo or film that you can upload to your social network and share with your friends or review after the event than about participating in the event itself. The motivation to build a record of your life and a beautifully designed image can seem more important than living the moment.
Snapchat isn’t like that. Snapchat is spontaneous, impermanent and in its way contrastingly private compared to other social trends.
Beloved of teens everywhere it allows to you send a picture of what’s happening right now to a friend or friends which will disappear 3 or 4 seconds after its viewed (and will be deleted from the server). Of course you can find a way to keep the picture that you’ve been sent even though you’re not meant to but the sender knows if you do and if you are a real geek you can recover the deleted data but you’re not meant to. The picture is supposed to be grainy, un-posed, blurry and simply fun.
Snapchat represents a change in a couple of ways from the social media that’s been supreme so far. In a funny way it is more private. You will probably choose a select set of people, or just one friend, to send it to rather than posting for all followers. The image doesn’t last. You’re not constructing an image for your followers in the way that you can build for yourself on other social media. You don’t keep it, nor does the recipient and it is like a butterfly postcard of a moment in time.
Snapchat has its dark side of course. Yet it undoubtedly has potential as a comms channel for brands with the right profile and the right voice. Some teen brands are trying. Some teen brands are taking their time about venturing in for good cautious reasons. You may have noticed though that other social media has a dark side too. The commercial model for Snapchat isn’t clear at all to me yet, but there’s certainly an opportunity to win over lots of teens if a brand uses it appropriately. Also – it is fun. Give it a go. Doesn’t matter what you look like, no one will dig the image out of a cupboard decades later. Now you see it, now you don’t.
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 15th, 2013 at 10:00 am and is filed under MediaComment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.