Snapchat Service
Snapchat, a company that lets you send multimedia files to friends, is becoming more popular every day. Everyone around us in today’s society has a phone or smartphone with picture capabilities. People are always taking pictures, videos, or sending text messages to friends, families, and co-workers either to exchange information or pass the time by. “Selfies” are becoming hugely popular, from showing off new hairstyles, showing off a famous person you met, or even to communicate emotion to someone, this new fad is not dying down soon. In early 2014, a music group called, The Chainsmokers released a song titled, “Selfie” about a girl at a bar taking photos of herself all night. Wherever you turn this phenomenon is becoming something no one can ignore forever.
These companies are making a huge amount of profits by such a large population using their products. According to Snapchat, in May 2014 there were 700 million photos and videos being sent each and every day. That is a huge market to be able to create a business out of. One unusual feature of Snapchat, is that you cannot save the photo and show it to someone later, there is only a small window of 1 to 10 seconds that the recipient can view the message, and then it is erased forever. This can be hugely beneficial and is most likely why such a large number of transactions are sent daily, because people know that their message cannot be reposted to the internet, or showed to a friend who was not the recipient.
This relates what we did in class, pertaining to the Strong Triadic Closure and the strength of ties. In lecture and from the readings we found that stronger ties were based on more communication with that specific person, and weak ties were based on lesser communication. Because Snapchat deletes the entire message 10 seconds after it has been received, Snapchat is unable to use communication ties to their benefit. Whereas Facebook can base whom they recommend as a friend by looking at the people you talk to on a regular basis and recommend friends of friends you have strong ties with.
Back in May of 2013, it was found out that Snapchat was not actually erasing the content that it had promised to its users. It was concluded that Snapchat saved information such as; the last 200 messages sent, and unviewed messages are saved for 30 days.
Facebook was most likely interested in buying Snapchat not only for its huge popularity with so many people, its exposure to such a large population that is still growing, but also for the fact that they could use Strong Triadic Closure and the strength of ties based on amount of communication to recommend friends that you may want to send that picture or video to using Snapchat.
Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapchat#Image_retrieval_and_storage_claims
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicamisener/cool-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-snapchat#2p0ox3m
http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-lawsuit-photos-texts-and-emails-2013-8