More Snapchat, less social media?
Every day when I was passing through the subway station, one billboard ad caught my attention.
“Less social media, more Snapchat”.
It’s cool.
But honestly, I was a little bit confused about that at first. Isn’t Snapchat a kind of social media platform? Is this slogan contradicting itself?
So, I google this marketing campaign and download the Snapchat app. From that perspective, maybe it is a successful campaign because it at least brought people like me who don’t have Snapchat to download it.
The video is really touching and appealing. Since it reveals the main problem social media current has for our lives.
We can see people more often on the internet, but also, we also see each other less in real life.
But we have to rethink that isn’t this debate about social media already a cliché?
Snapchat launched this marketing campaign in which it seeks to present its platform as the anti-social media, to distance itself from the issues being experienced within other apps. It is also worth noting that Snap has been pushing this alternative angle for years, working to distance itself from the “social media” tag as it seeks to differentiate its offering.
You may also be as curious as me that being a social media platform how can Snapchat differentiate from other?
This is the following explanation by Snap:
“Snapchat is different, because it doesn’t have a feed, and it isn’t seeking to showcase your posts to as many people as possible. Snapchat opens to the camera and deletes your content by default. That, it suggests, enables users to feel more free to post about more aspects of their lives.”
Sounds great. But can this truly address the problem? Or is there any problem needs to be addressed?
My answer is probably no.
Back in 2017, when Snap first launched its Spectacles camera glasses, it also tried to re-brand itself as “a camera company,” with a focus on developing new ways to innovate the capture of experiences, as opposed to being a social engagement platform.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has, at different times, reiterated that camera focus, while also labeling Snapchat as a messaging service, in variance to other social apps.
Indeed, last month, Spiegel also said that “Social media is dead”.
I don’t think he had ever considered the actual users of Snapchat before he said that.
As we can see in these stats, the main user of Snapchat is still young people aged 18–29 and they almost born with social media!
Even if Snapchat tries its best to distance itself from “social media”, it still is.This is because when people start to “say” and “post” something, the social function starts.
It’s just human nature.
However, every coin has two sides. Instead of thinking about addressing the social media problem in the “social media era”, why not look at the benefits social media bring to us, and create a more friendly environment for people to socialize?
Social media isn’t the one to be blamed, but the one who uses it unproperly.
