Social media is about friending someone so they'll invite you to a party or get you a job. If that's the work, Snapchat is the playground.
— Evan Spiegel
I am a young, white, educated male. I got really, really lucky. And life isn't fair.
Somewhere along the way, when we were building social media products, we forgot the reason we like to communicate with our friends is because it's fun.
The fun thing about Snapchat is really the surprise and the joy that comes from learning how to use it.
What Snapchat said was if we try to model conversations as they occur, they're largely ephemeral. We may try to write down and save the really special moments, but by and large, we just try to let everything go. We remember it, but we don't try to save it.
It seems odd that at the beginning of the Internet, everyone decided everything should stick around forever.
It would be better for everyone if we deleted everything by default and saved the things that are important to us.
Talking with pictures and making memories is universally appealing.
Snapchat changed that perception of deleting something as bad. Online, typically you delete something if it's bad or if it's really embarrassing.
People started conceiving of their friends as networking tools, like, 'Friend me so you can be friends with someone else,' or, 'The more people you know, the more networked you are.' But we see real value in having a fun conversation with your friends.
The social marketing teams of big companies will always figure out a way to advertise on Snapchat. I'd like to create a space for people who have a lot of talent but not a lot of reach.
