How Snapchat took over Yale

http://haufler.org/2013/02/05/how-snapchat-took-over-yale/

by shaufler • 13 years ago

74 36 13 years ago

haufler.org

damian2000• 13 years ago

Given the fact you can send out messages to multiple recipients, how do they stop it from being bombarded by spammers?

shaufler• 13 years ago

Users need to accept you as a friend before you can send them Snapchats

potater• 13 years ago

Unless it has changed recently, I think anyone can receive Snapchats until disabled. At least, that's how it was when I opened an account a few weeks back. That was discovered when I received an unsolicited snapchat from a name I didn't recognize (I have no friends on the service aside from the default teamsnapchat).

Rather than risk viewing something regrettable, I deleted the "message" and quickly found the setting to disallow unknown users from messaging me. :)

jusben13693• 13 years ago

My 12 year old and her group of friends are hooked on Snapchat. No idea it had reached the University/College level. My understanding is the kids love it because several parents insist that their children never delete their texts until the parent has reviewed all of them each night.

People will share more when they know that content goes away. Makes a lot of sense but would have never thought of it that way prior.

wmblaettler• 13 years ago

I am not one that checks my daughter's txts every night, but I do educate her that her actions can have farther reaching consequences than a young person might think at the time. Doesn't the false sense of privacy that this app creates give you concern that your daughter and her group of friends might overshare and create problems for themselves or others? The content does not go away, there is no way to prevent that. There have already been several workarounds (hacks) to persist the images being sent and I could think of a few more low tech solutions (second camera to take a photo of the snapchat screen is one that comes to mind).

shardling• 13 years ago

All those are much easier to fake, and thus deny.

jusben13693• 13 years ago

A lot of things worry me about my daughter(s) and the technology that they use. It sounds like you take the same approach. I can't tackle each new app in a tactical fashion so I can only drive the 30,000 foot level stuff. "Would you be proud of this if someone else saw it? Do you think that's hurtful to other folks involved?" etc so that she asks herself those questions. Honestly the ones that seem most vulnerable are those ones where their parents are micromanaging - but that's probably just symptomatic of larger issues.

the_watcher• 13 years ago

It started at the college level. For months it was literally only on Stanford's campus (where the founders are students).

jusben13693• 13 years ago

Did not know. Thanks for sharing.

rcraft• 13 years ago

Nice article - It seems lazy to me when people hastily assume snapchat is only used for sexting.

From my experience with younger siblings and their friends, it seems much more mainstream among high schoolers and is genuinely being used as a legitimate communication tool, not just a sexting app.

Is this true or do you think it does lend to more of a sexting crowd/behavior?

joshmlewis2• 13 years ago

It does have those connotations at first when people use it I believe. It's just one of those things, I'm sure a lot of people use it for naughty behavior but there's not really a way to do know for sure except surveying. It does make it easy, but in my experience it can be used for non-sexting type things. Just a funny hello or capturing emotion of messages back and forth is quite fun.

digitalengineer2• 13 years ago

Since snaps disappear seconds after they are opened, users feel comfortable sending spontaneous and personal messages that they would not want ingrained into digital histories.

I donno but taking a screenshot and posting it on FB isn't very difficult. Do people really believe the images 'disappear'?

landr0id• 13 years ago

Seeing that someone took a screenshot will usually deter you from sending more embarrassing photos in the future.

ed209• 13 years ago

If you're expecting something potentially embarrassing, then it's not so hard to be at the ready with a camera to take a photo of the screen.

joshmlewis2• 13 years ago

Yeah they do. It's more of the fact that it alerts the other person when someone does that. If for instance I knew person a's trust in me would be decreased a lot if they knew I tried to save something they didn't want to be saved, then that gives me my own moral I guess gauge as to playing by the rules. If I didn't know the person then obviously the limiting factor my internal gauge might put in is decreased. If a friend trusted me and I let them down and risked a friendship by going around that then the barrier is higher. OF course that doesn't stop me from just being a bad friend, taking something private and making it public either. So there's still risk and trust involved.

digitalengineer2• 13 years ago

This App promotes itself with 'temporary photo's'. But they're anything but. Combine teens with 'private' photo's that really are not temporary and basically it's an accident waiting to happen. I think we've all heard our share of jealous ex(boy)friend stories dumping loads of pics when the relation crashed. If people feel save because the images are 'temporary' odd are they'll find out things were not so private.

Teens doing teen-things is fine. But the sense of security they think they're getting is false.

tammer• 13 years ago

The key here is intention. While of course it's quite possible for images to be reproduced in one way or another, the fact that they must be reproduced, and not simply 'shared' or 're-*ed,' changes the user's relation to the app.

I think this gets to the tone of the article, as communicating this way implies a level of trust and/or intimacy usually reserved for analog methods.

Snapchat is brilliant in this regard. I think we're going to see a lot more communication platforms built on limitations rather than sprawling features.

001sky• 13 years ago

I think we're going to see a lot more communication platforms built on limitations

-- This would be an interesting brainstorm.

ChikkaChiChi2• 13 years ago

I hope I'm not coming off as a conspiracy nut, but I can't see the US Government being too keen on something like this that's truly untraceable.

IANAL, but it seems to me that every service or software that is used for personal communication is forced by the Feds to allow accessibility for wiretapping circumstances.

Of course, I'm completely against it and I believe the situation is completely untenable for them to persist, but I don't think a social picture app will be the ones to stand tall on user privacy.

SeanDav• 13 years ago

This hardly untraceable. Everything going through the networks is recordable and the Government has access to it all.

ChikkaChiChi2• 13 years ago

Right, but the same could be said about Facebook and other social networks. The FBI wants more specific access to social media services so that they can gather contextual evidence instead of just whatever is out there in the ether:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57544139-38/judge-prods-fb...

sequoia• 13 years ago

4chan has a very similar dynamic vis-a-vis ephemerality and lowering social inhibitions. On 4chan nothing is saved (internally) and threads disappear minutes after people stop posting actively in them. This was the first thing I thought of when hearing (just now) about Snapchat: "Oh, it's like 4chan."

drewwwwww• 13 years ago

the best part of this article is that we learn even yale undergraduates have no idea how statistics work. "i estimate that the contacts in my phone are a representative sample." based on what? the fact that you want to make generalizations?

hnriot• 13 years ago

Of a typical Yale student I assume be meant. And I don't see how you can fault the author for that.

graue• 13 years ago

I'm curious now, is anyone over college age (say, 25+) using this thing? The way it's based on impermanence intrigues me more and more, but no one I know's on it yet.

tg3• 13 years ago

My group of friends (young 20's) all use it, although not very frequently. I have a feeling it will continue to grow outside of college populations.

eridius• 13 years ago

I have the same question. As a social phenomenon it intrigues me, but nobody I know uses (or at least, has admitted to using) Snapchat or Facebook Poke.

jpadkins• 13 years ago

quick tip for the author: If you are doing a 2x2 grid, the convention is you want better to be up and to the right. So you want snapchat to be in the upper right quadrant. I was initially confused when I glanced at your table and thought "Morse code is the best solution?"

skeletonjelly• 13 years ago

Better in this case is subjective.

How Snapchat took over Yale

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