Snapchat annoys me. Is that a problem?
By Selina Wang
I’m a millennial covering tech in New York with a confession to make: Snapchat annoys me. A lot.
In last week’s IPO filing, Snap Inc. said its “greatest opportunity is to improve the way people live and communicate.” Yet between iMessage, Facebook, WeChat, Line, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, e-mail and news alerts, I’m drowning in notifications on my phone. When I get a direct Snapchat message with an address or a restaurant name, I’ll look back only to realize moments later that it’s disappeared. While the ephemeral nature of Snapchat is a central feature, that’s also a liability when it becomes someone’s main communications tool. I usually end up messaging the person outside of Snapchat anyway.
Among my circle of friends, only a handful are avid Snapchat users. Nine times out of ten, they will choose to upload their most hilarious or exciting moments to Instagram and Facebook. Within this group, Snapchat actually feels more impersonal — not, as the company said, a tool to “empower people to express themselves.” I can easily waste an hour reading friends’ Facebook posts or scrolling through Instagram feeds of chefs and designers. I’m bored after two minutes on Snapchat.
Even though the majority of its users are 18–34 year-olds, it seems the true Snapchats addicts are Gen Z-ers (generally those born within the past two decades). There’s even a phenomenon among this demographic called “streaking”, in which friends have to Snap back and forth nonstop everyday. They’ll send a picture of anything — walls, floors, and ceilings — to keep the snaps going, but they aren’t truly engaging with the platform or helping advertisers.
The company knows that users like me who fail to engage regularly with the app are a huge risk for the business. It would be very difficult for Snapchat to turn me into an avid user, regardless of how many cool lenses or geofilters they add. Marketers aren’t reaching me either, because I rarely open the Discover or Story pages, and avoid sponsored filters like the plague. So it’s not surprising that the company has tried to position itself as more than just a picture-messaging app. They’re calling themselves a camera company — in fact, the word “camera” is mentioned 79 times in the IPO filing.
Yet being a hardware maker is another dangerous path. GoPro’s recent struggles show that it’s no easy feat to make money with cameras. While suffering from slowing demand, GoPro has tried and failed to position itself as a media and software company.
Snapchat was masterful in creating buzz around its Spectacles digital sunglasses. Yet short-lived novelty gadgets lead to higher costs, putting even further pressure on profitability. On top of this, Snapchat is already drawing (unwelcome) comparisons to Twitter, which seems doomed to operate in Facebook’s shadow.
Maybe I need to own the Snapchat spectacles myself before I write them off as just another gadget. But my friends and I are unlikely to drop several hundred dollars for them on eBay, or stand in line to buy them at mysterious vending machines around New York City. Plus, the thought of those expensive shades gathering dust in the drawer (along with my GoPro camera) makes me shudder.
We may only be a small sample size of Snap’s target audience, but our interactions with the app might not give much hope to investors that the young company can prevent one of their stated risk factors from coming true: that they “may never achieve or maintain profitability.”
This originally appeared in Bloomberg Technology’s newsletter Fully Charged. Sign up here.
