Information Cascade and Snapchat
As more and more people are drawn to something, such as a social media platform like snapchat, believe it or not this causes exponential growth meaning faster and faster growth as the platform gets bigger and bigger. Snapchat is used by millions of young American children and it isn’t because of how original and groundbreaking the apps ideas are but rather the fact that it reached the right group of people at the right time. It is a instant messaging app as well as a social media platform where you can see what you friends, social media influencers as well as famous people are up to. The whole appeal in the app is that you need to have your friends on it. This allowed Snapchat to grow extremely quickly in tight-knit communities at different high schools and colleges, where students interact constantly by sending each other pictures of their faces or just using the app as an alternate means of communication and they can also tell each other to download the app or see their friends using the app and want to download it themselves.
A information cascade is when a large group of people make virtually the same decision, in a cascading fashion without any real regard for their own opinions but rather base their trust in the decision that is being made based on the actions that is being taken by the people before them. When it comes to an app like snapchat, if you do end up downloading it because you see your friends using it and it becomes close to their primary means of communication you aren’t going to make your own judgments on the app, rather you follow the herd in order to keep up with current trends. Sending pictures that virtually disappear after a period of time, which is the premise of snapchat, from a lot of outside perspectives seems like a recipe for disaster. It can cause cyberbullying, lying about what is being send to another party, or just pure annoyance with not being able to read a message in time. All of these factors do not matter, very few people will uninstall the app after they have already incorporated it into their lives based on these factors rather they feel social pressures and keep on using the app. Snapchat started with a bunch of high schoolers in Los Angles and due to the Information cascade effect as well as being in the right place in the right time now it is used all across the world and one of the most successful social media apps in the world.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/02/16/how-snapchat-gained-success-by-going-viral-at-high-schools-across-los-angeles/?sh=217219f93b36