Snapchat Introduces Memories: a Searchable, Shareable Archive of Your Snaps (theverge.com) 41
Casey Newton, reporting for The Verge: At a time when its social networking rivals are racing to promote more real-time sharing, Snapchat is turning its attention to the past. The company today introduced Memories, a way of saving and sharing old snaps in a private archive inside the main app. It's a living, social camera roll in which photos and videos can be organized, edited, and shared long after they are taken. The introduction of Memories represents a significant shift for the famously ephemeral Snapchat -- and reflects the app's growing status as the default camera for millions of users.Reporter Alex Kantrowitz says this update "will make Snapchat feel a little less raw and in-the-moment, and a little more polished and, err, stale. That's a big deal." In a post on BuzzFeed News, he says this update will make Snapchat more addictive. He explains why: Posts from Snapchat are regularly repurposed. On any given day, you're likely to encounter saved snaps on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. People post snaps to other networks because they don't want to constrain themselves to one network. But they also post them elsewhere because saving a snap to a camera roll can feel like tossing it into the abyss. Posting a snap to Instagram, however, can give it a sense of permanence and organization. By creating Memories, Snapchat is building its own home for these old snaps. Whether it's the company's intention or not, Memories will create an avenue within Snapchat for people to do what they're doing with snaps outside, namely: save, organize, edit, republish. The likely result: more time inside Snapchat, less in other apps.
Advances in Tech. (Score:1)
They just re-made Instagram. What will they think of next?
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Instagram and FB are mostly an archive of old stuff.
Exactly! Instagram and FB should develop an algorithm that shows you new things. New things you'd be interested in. They could arrange them in a stream, so you'd get a stream of new things that you're interested in. Now that would be a game changer.
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Then they could take all the new things you are interested in, and not show them to you. Instead, they could show you old things that you already saw or don't care about, interspersed with what they think you should care about based on the data they have mined about you, your physical location, what your Aunt Gertie liked 13 weeks ago, etc.
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... what your Aunt Gertie liked 13 weeks ago, etc.
Showing me what my Aunt Gertie liked 13 weeks ago is considered current in Aunt Gertie's world.
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My Aunt Gertie died 12 weeks ago, you insensitive clod!
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My Aunt Gertie died 12 weeks ago, you insensitive clod!
This won't show up on my FB feed for another week. Blame Zuck.
I think the opposite. Forgetting their core niche (Score:2)
There are many, many apps for sharing pictures. Plain mms even for sharing with one or a few people. The whole point of Snapchat, the reason people choose Snapchat rather than any of 10,000 other apps, is that the pics go away. If Snapchat forgets what makes them special, they'll probably lose their market dominance in that niche.
For long-term archiving and sharing of old pics, Facebook has huge advantages. If Snapchat decides to go head-to-head with Facebook, I think they'll lose quickly a
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Fun fact: Instragram comes from Portuguese estragar, "to ruin", "to botch", "to stale".
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nice pivot (Score:5, Insightful)
so the app whose main claim to fame was that your pictures (and video?) would disappear from the screen of the recipient has pivoted to the functionality of storing those pictures (like your good old camera app does already) so that they can be sent out again later?
OK, the innovation is staggering. I am sure this adds a few billions to the valuation...
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Controlled access/distribution is still alurring to many, too bad it's merely an illusion of control.
Snapchat's ability to disable the screenshot functionality of your phone, thus preventing you from capturing the photos that Snapchat will soon disappear, was a major innovation. Oh...
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Oh, are you kidding? Now that Snapchat can SAVE the pictures taken with your camera to your very phone... I say it increases the 20 or so billion Snapchat market cap [cnn.com] by another 5 at least, basically adds the value of an airline like Lufthansa [yahoo.com] to the extremely important piece of Internet infrastructure that is Snapchat. I mean pfft, an airline with 268 aircraft (615 aircraft if you count all of the subsidiaries). [wikipedia.org], 220 destinations, 32.4 Billion Euro in assets, about 32 billion in revenues, 1.67 billion in o
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Yeah, Lufthansa has a P/E that's pretty nuts, must be a lot of risk priced in. They also have 6B in debt, so that's priced in. Snapchat of course has no risk priced in, just infinite growth - I can see no flaw in that plan.
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I can see no flaw in that plan.
Well, other than not having any revenue. But they'll make it up in volume.
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40 years after the personal computer revolution started, I can finally store data for later use!
Mercury delay lines weren't good enough for you?
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too sequential
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Future Hope Dashed (Score:1)
A week ago, I thought it was interesting that the younger generation was always on their phones.
The idea that being connected to others was something they valued highly.
For example, choosing to be on their phone instead of "at work";
choosing a connection to other people over being a good little producer/good little consumer.
Then I read this article and realize, it's not a connection to others.
It's just a generation mass-afflicted by narcissistic personality disorder.
They don't crave a connection to others,
Re: Revolutionary tech! (Score:1)
If they leverage the synergies of these new innovative technologies, we're in for a social media paradigm shift, folks.
Seriously, WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought the *entire* point of SNAPCHAT was that nothing was supposed to be saved! That was the entire point of their business model, their venture capital and their IPO (if it exists).
So, after it was revealed that they actually do save shit, now they are going to embrace that, and allow you to revisit your old nude selfies that are already all over the internet.
It's like Facebook suddenly switching gears and announcing that they are going to model themselves after Yahoo, and become a search engine.
Screw it, I'm going to start a business with an impossible plan, then, after I've gotten millions in capital, I'll announce that the company is something else, get my sock puppet and sell dog food over the internet.
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Screw it, I'm going to start a business with an impossible plan, then, after I've gotten millions in capital, I'll announce that the company is something else, get my sock puppet and sell dog food over the internet.
Create a browser front end for online forums with AI that will identify content derogatory to the user and rewrite it as praise. That should appeal to all those narcissists.
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I have to say, this was the most insightful and interesting post I think I have ever seen. Can I follow your Twitter account?
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I'm going to start a business with an impossible plan, then, after I've gotten millions in capital, I'll announce that the company is something else, get my sock puppet and sell dog food over the internet.
You should! It really is that easy!!
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I thought the *entire* point of SNAPCHAT was that nothing was supposed to be saved!
The entire point of snapchat is to make money. It's hard to advertise to people if you don't have any saved data about them, duh.
A heavily-requested feature (Score:2)