You’ve probably all noticed a sneaky little ghost popping up
everywhere over the past few years, well that’s the face of the fasted growing
social media application of 2014 – Snapchat. Like it or not you simply
cannot escape from social media anymore and Snapchat is the latest offering
that is being raved about worldwide. Unlike its competitors it’s intentions
isn't to glamourize your lifestyle or look sexy or beautiful, but more so about communicating
the real you without the stress of knowing it has a permanent shelf life.
That’s what makes this application so unique, within a matter of 10 seconds or
24 hours (depending on what you chose) your content is deleted for good, making
it more carefree and appealing to users.
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| Snapchat founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy |
Created by three Stanford University students back in April
2007 as an idea for a class project. The group decided to develop the idea
further under the name ‘Picaboo’ and finally launched it in June 2011, although
it was later re-branded and relaunched as Snapchat in September 2011. Ever since, the application has experienced rapid growth
year on year. In November 2012 over one billion photos had been shared on the
app equating to an incredible 20 million photos being shared every day. This figure
soon increased by 400 million photos per day by November 2013, rising again to
700 million photos per day by May 2014.
So I know what you all must be thinking, how on earth did this
technology grow so fast and what makes it so special? First of all today’s
society and generation is becoming more visual and engaging hence Twitter’s
recent decline in growth and Instagram’s strong incline. Users want to share
engaging photos and videos with family and friends and with significant
advances in mobile technology it allows us to do this more easily. Secondly,
Snapchat’s main demographic is aged between 13 -23, young audiences generally
tend to be easily influenced and always keen to get hands on with the latest
emerging technologies. Thirdly, the app is heavily utilised by celebrities and
key influencers worldwide aka free marketing for the app.
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| Chaira Ferragni announcing her Snapchat to the world |
Celebrities and
Influencers
The app is a favourite amongst numerous celebrities and
social media influencers worldwide, which is definitely a key factor of the
app’s rapid growth throughout the years. Celebrities such as Kylie Jenner (part
of the giant Kardashian brand) is an avid user of Snapchat and has expressed
her love of the app many times, constantly sharing controversial snaps with her
millions of followers. Social media influencers have also heavily impacted the
app’s growth with successful bloggers and youtubers such as Chiara Ferragni and Zoella regularly
posting snaps, encouraging their followers to download the app and
follow their journey.
One of the reasons why the app has been so well received by
the blogging community is due to the ability to express their true
personalities through mini vlogs and give their followers a true insight into
their lives. The app is also a lot less time consuming in comparison to other
social platforms such as YouTube or Instagram.
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| Kylie Jenner posing with Tyga on Snapchat |
Negativity
Like every new craze, there has been slight negativity and controversy
surrounding the new app. Due to the functionality (deleting content within a
time-frame), it has been predominately associated with sharing sensitive content
including sexual content, which was a huge concern as it has such a young fan
base. However a recent study in 2014 discovered 60% of Snapchat users actually
use the app for comedic purposes (pulling funny faces, telling jokes etc). It showed
that users find the app fun and a great way to pass time.
So with new emerging technologies on the rise every day, contemporary
advances and innovations in information technology means we’ll be seeing a lot
more visual and engaging applications. Hats off to Snapchat for establishing
their platform in such a saturated market. It looks like ghostface chillah (the mascot) is
here to stay so if you haven’t jumped on the Snapchat bandwagon yet then we suggest
you do!
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