I remember when Snapchat first came out. It was a big deal. The next big thing since Facebook. It came out around the same time Instagram did. Both were geared toward using pictures as a means for sharing your social life. It was a movement against Facebook status updates and lengthy paragraphs.
Rather, the two apps have focused on the mantra "a picture is worth a thousand words." The only problem is Instagram is changing and constantly has the room to advance as a formal platform, whereas Snapchat is dying a slow death do its dwindling audience and minimal areas improvement can happen for this informal platform.
The most recent Snapchat updates could have been the ones to send people over the edge and away from using this as a social media platform.
The new layout is disorganized and makes it difficult to watch other followers stories. Not to mention Instagram has also added stories that are more organized and overall more attracting to look at. You have to scroll through your chats in order to watch peoples specific stories and you can't go through all the stories with just a tapping motion anymore.
They put adds and big names to put their own stories that are annoying and time-consuming. Going through Snapchat stories now could take me over thirty minutes. Social media apps are supposed to be designed to be a convenient and quick way to stay in touch not over an hour of your time to watch what people are doing.
I have found that as we move away from the high school scene the appeal for Snapchat also fades. Many college students are busy with classes or joining on-campus activities that no longer requires them to live their lives through the phone. I have not had the time or the desire to go on Snapchat in the last four months because of the time-consuming nature and the immature stuff posted on Snapchat.
It was how people got attention in high school. In high school, having Snapchat was how the cool people stayed cool and the uncool people watched everyone else's lives. It was a platform for people to be able to do immature and illegal things without anyone finding out. It is the app parents can't seem to figure out or have the desire to use. Becuase Snapchat is so appealing to the middle school/high school realm it is only targeting a small audience than an overall larger audience.
You may not agree with me and still find Snapchat as appealing as it was when it came out years ago. Social media cannot last forever and this was already observed through the downfall of Facebook. People will start to move away from something so informal, time-consuming, disorganized, and unsafe as a platform on to the next big thing.
