Me, my selfie, and I

ADB-160404#172

Snapchat is the Kim Kardashian of apps: something nobody asked for but everyone wants to check out.

It’s all about me, myself(ie) and I. And you thought Twitter was narcissistic for sharing what you had for breakfast!

Snapchat is the new, new, new, new social network. You might even call it post social.

But wait… doesn’t Facebook already connect us to everything? Yes, yes it does, old person, but that’s not the point.

To kids, Facebook feels like Tumblr’s boring dad. It’s great when you need something, like a reminder that it’s your mom’s birthday, but it’s definitely not cool. You’re not going to cut yourself off from it, but you’re totes going to stay distant.

Twitter feels like CB Radio (not that anyone under 30 remembers what Citizens band radio actually is) — you broadcast small bursts of communication over a personal channel, and you get to have a cool handle like “Lost Sheep” or “Milwaukee Kid”.

Even the popular Instagram is losing its shine. Like the Polaroid before it, Instagram is just not developing into anything. It feels like a camera app with chat bolted on, instead of a sleek selfie-taking machine. It’s limitations used to be what made it dope, but now they just feel like… limitations.

Snapchat is positioning itself to be the lens through which the world sees us, but more importantly, the lens through which we see the world. In real time. Right now. If you are young.

What started as a sexting app with disappearing images, has turned into a robust, feature-packed communications platform that includes:

• Texting
• Photos, sent in multiples, even during video & audio calls
• Overlay drawings, locations, time, temperature, and other layers on photos
• Filters that use facial recognition and augmented reality to transform you into strange versions of yourself and add infinite interest to your selfies
• Video & Audio Calls (like Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp)
• Video & Audio Notes of short looping content in a chat (like Vine, Anchor.fm)
• Stickers (like FB Messanger, Line)
• Replays
• Trophies

You can use these tools to chat, or to build your stories—something other people can watch (and now reply to). Or you can just make yourself look like a badass panda.

Increasingly, news, information, and entertainment is being consumed through Snapchat. Here are just a few of the contributors:

• Cosmo, CNN, the Food Network, Vice, National Geographic, MTV (is that still a thing?), People, and Buzzfeed.
• My local baseball team (Let’s go Blue Jays!) now has a geofilter that decks me out in Jays gear so I can look like a baller.

The future is being shaped by Snapchat. Right now. Believe it. Go ask someone under 25.

If you want to follow virtually nothing, because I only use Snapchat to tell my daughter that dinner’s ready, you can find me here: