Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy are the two founders of one of the biggest social media networks, called Snapchat. Snapchat is used by one hundred fifty million users per day. Snapchat has a wide age demographic because it is popular among people who are school age, college age, and even young adults. Users make a username, which is how others see them, and add them. A relatively new feature Snapchat has added is the ‘Snapcode,’ which is a quicker way to add friends, rather than by username. Users can either screenshot their friend’s Snapcode and upload it into snapchat from their device’s camera roll, or they can take a picture of their friend’s Snapcode right on Snapchat, and their friend will be added. Once people add their friends, they’re all kept in a ‘friends list.’ Then, users take pictures of themselves (called selfies), scenery, or anything else they want, and send it to people on their friends list while adding a caption. The picture can be set to be shown for a certain amount of time, or until the receiver taps it off the screen. It is like texting, only with pictures each time, and there’s a catch; the pictures disappear forever either after it is clicked off the screen or the time runs out. This was a completely new and innovative way for communication. The ability to send pictures and videos, while still chatting with a person, was easier and more fun. Also, because the pictures disappear, it added more fun because people can send embarrassing “selfies” and not have to worry about them being seen by everyone. Snapchat also made connecting with people easier because it only requires an internet connection to be able to send pictures. There was a time when sending pictures through texts costed extra. With Snapchat, people could send pictures and messages as long as there was internet connection, and there’d be no extra charge. Spiegel and Murphy were very successful and innovative with their invention of Snapchat. It added a twist to texting and made communicating with friends easier and more fun. Even today, they are constantly adding new features to the network, such as the ability to add filters to the pictures, the ability to use the ‘discover’ page to read magazines and catch up on current events in the world, and make Snapchat Stories. Snapchat Stories are pictures or videos that people put on to their Snapchat and everybody the person is friends with can see it continuously for 24 hours before it disappears. Their new ideas and changes to Snapchat continue to make the network better, more exciting, and more appealing to users, all while still making communication easy.
I am an avid user of Snapchat, and have really enjoyed its user interface. It really have revolutionized how texting works.