Why Instagram > Snapchat? (it’s not just copying)
If everyone who were active users of both Insta and Snap were forced to wholly delete their profile/account and perhaps never use it again, there is no doubt that Instagram would be a preferred choice 100 times over. Just think about your own choice when presented with aforementioned ultimatum. They have copied Stories, but Insta is eventually a scrapbook of your life that has your earned likes, through sweat and tears. Especially as future institutions from people renting out their home to a state offering financial support will take that online profile into account, like in China at this very moment. It all makes it so much more mentally difficult to delete Insta compared to Snap. Where everything is being deleted from the get go — if that wasn’t the case then Snap would be done. The same way tech companies would perish if it became public that they sell users’ data. Which is not the case. That is something done by companies like Datalogix, Epsilon, Acxiom, and Bluekai that harvest your data from purchase receipts, loyalty card programs etc…and sell it to the highest bidder.
Online identity hook keeping us invested in Insta is the very reason why they pull in new incoming generations while Snapchat has their main usage amongst teenagers : “this is much more akin to how we actually talk in the real world, disappearing messages were particularly attractive to teens put off by the prospect of their parents, future admissions officers, future employers, and whoever else spying on what they said. “the fact snaps disappeared removed whatever reticence teenagers may have had about sending their pictures, and the result was messaging that was far more personal than Facebook’s preening or Twitter’s broadcasting.” Unfortunately they’ll leave once their peers leave aka 2/3 of users who become 20 years old, because there will be less embarrassing stuff we’d prefer to hide as we grow up, and we have less time for all that as we need to focus on other channels, such as LinkedIn.
Therefore, unless Snap comes up with a new business model banking on brand advertising (that atm moves from TV to Snap)…as much as I wish Snap all the best I don’t see them being around in 10 years as attention social media users can allocate is sparse and new innovations are already coming around. Mainly banking on VR, where FB is active with Oculus Rift, Snap not so much. Where you’ll have the ability to become whoever you want. That seems to be the most probable dystopia, that our children will see as normal and only we (as parents) will recognise as dystopia… which I’ll get into some other time. //Just read ‘Ready Player One’.
Essentially VR will bring together two things : you having recorded all your memories like you do in Insta while maintaining your anonymity as you do in Reddit, for example. The latter renders Snap’s offer of the public never learning about your “sins”… worthless. Especially as that little feature (deleting data) can be attached to the VR world being created. If Insta could copy it now, then in 10 years it’ll be a feature that can be quickly attached to any online environment as a code snippet like Stripe has done for payments.
All in all, from now on there will always be an online profile to be taken care of in a similar manner as previous generations catered their lawn and garden. But the majority will only have time for a couple selected ones, because although businesses should try out every new environment (according to Gary Vaynerchuk) to get ahead…people who have nothing else to sell besides their name will not have time for that. By majority I mean non-celebrities, who cannot count on merely their image being the source of income. Of course, there will be services catering to that (very much relevant) market as shown in Black Mirror’s (great) episode “Nosedive” and those companies will be taking care of your marketing if you’re willing to spend the money. Without you wasting your time on it. Simply grant access to your whole social profile backstage (iCloud account etc) and they will take care of your social media marketing by picking out the best content out of all photos/videos you’ve got. Of course, you can create a folder where you’ll have the stuff you’re willing to share with them. But that would take time and I believe in 10–15 years we will see our time as a more precious commodity compared to privacy. I would actually be surprised if FANG companies themselves would not offer those services, considering that they will have easier time keeping your data safe from hackers etc, compared to startups for whom it’ll take years until they’ve built up enough reputation to handle your personal photos/videos. I haven’t heard of anything like that, but I’d bet there’s a startup already making headway on a program that spits out appropriate captions and tags that’ll earn more likes than a mere human-made writing ever could. Anyways, there you go…another profession that’ll be undoubtedly prevalent and that’ll keep humans occupied. Awesome.
