The rise of Snapchat, an app that allows you to send self-destructing messages, mirrors the rise of Pinterest, a digital scrap book site.
Pinterest got big with "normal" people before the tech press and investment class realized it was getting popular. Same with Snapchat. It was popular with teenagers before the technochamber caught on.
Josh Miller, who founded Branch, a site dedicated to curated conversations from experts, says he should have seen the rise of Snapchat coming because his 15 year-old sister told him it was going to be bigger than Instagram a few months ago.
This wasn't the first time she made a bold tech trend call. She also told him previously Instagram was as popular as Facebook with her friends.
So, when he was visiting her for the holidays, he asked his sister for her thoughts on all the major social sites of the web.
Here's an abridged version of her thoughts:
- Instagram: Her friends post photos of people, not arty objects, and it acts like a better version of a Facebook feed for her friends.
- Facebook: She and her friends try to avoid it because they tend to get lost in it. She also only goes to Facebook after looking at Instagram. This is good and bad. It's good that Facebook is surfacing interesting material, but it's bad that Facebook's brand is associated with getting consumed.
- Instant Message: No one uses it. Instead they use iMessage, texting, or Snapchat.
- Snapchat: It's used as much as Instagram, and it's a communication tool. It's not just sexting. It's for meaningless interactions. "It’s a way to connect with friends when you don’t really have anything to say."
- Tumblr: It's only photos, and it's one of those things where you follow people that post really good stuff. You rarely post your own stuff. Miller interpreted her sister's comments to mean that Tumblr could be the next MySpace.
- Twitter: Her quote: “"Nobody uses it. I know you love it but I don’t get it. I mean, I guess a a few kids use it but they’re all the ones who won’t shut up in class, who always think they have something important to say."
What's next? She doesn't know, but Miller says her friends really like FaceTime. And they like video chatting, so maybe there's hope for Airtime, yet?
Read the full post from Miller with much more insight and detail here >
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