Social and Media vs Social Media: Snapchat vs Facebook
Social media has become an indispensable part of the day to day life. It has grown to be an important source of information and a medium for following and spreading trends, news, and ideas all over the world. With the advancement in mobile technology and the ever-increasing focus on ‘user first’ model, the social media platforms have developed a new user behavior: checking the platform, multiple times a day. In fact, according to stats published by Statistica: about 2,083,333 (more than 2 million) snaps are shared by Snapchat users in one internet minute.
With such huge activity on the social media platforms, the line between social and media has been completely erased and a new trend of social media has emerged. As such, most of the social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin etc have business model earning major revenue through sponsored advertisement i.e. they earn for each add they show to the users.
But one social media platform has been continuously challenging the trends of these platforms. Snapchat, which is one the popular social media apps among the teenager’s community, is the one app that comes close to communicating face to face than any other social app. It also tries to separate social from media by empowering users to control what they see. Let’s see how Snapchat differs from Facebook to understand the concept of social and media vs social media.
Facebook — Be Connected
Facebook is the biggest social media platform in the market with 1.13 billion daily active users. Millions of people use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos and learn more about the people they meet.
“We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us. Research shows that strengthening our relationships improves our well-being and happiness” — Mark Zuckerberg
But the purpose of use of the platform has diversified so much recently, that considering it just a social networking platform, is a serious misconception. Its usage reasons have diversified which includes social interactions, news and information sharing, promotion of businesses amongst others.
“Today, most people’s news feeds are dominated by professionally made content from brands, businesses and the news media.” — The Guardian
You might have seen, your news feed is more and more filled with the professional content of different pages, business ads etc than an update of what is going on with your friend list.
Do you know why is it so?
To answer this, you must understand how Facebook news feed works. It works on a ranking system to show only that type of content that you find interesting.
The Ranking System and it’s Factors.
Suppose you have visited a new page on facebook and found the content very interesting. You liked it, shared it, commented on it or performed any combination of these actions on it.
Facebook has an algorithm or a formula that allows it to rank a content on a scale of 5. In this way the priority of a post is decided and the higher the priority, the higher its position in your feed. The more you like a video, or comment on a post from that page, the more such stories you get.
“But recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.” -Mark Zuckerberg
Problems
- The major effect of this ranking system is that people spend more time then they intend to on the platform consuming the media rather than spending time by interacting with their social networks. As such many people have started deleting their facebook accounts or installed extensions that remove the news feed.
- Those who create content do not need to be vetted to distribute it widely on Facebook. That has allowed hate speech,fake news and disturbing videos aimed at children to proliferate on those platforms. For eg: During the Presidential election last year, Russian propagandists used Facebook, Google and Twitter to spread material meant to sow division and influence the outcome of the race.
Snapchat — The fastest way to share a moment
Snapchat has very less users as compared to facebook with only 188 million daily active users as of July 2018 according to Statistica, yet more activity than Facebook, only two positions below the total google searches done in a minute.
Unlike Facebook it encourages users to interact more with their social circles with the concept of image/video based messaging with the twist of disappearing media, making it fun for the user’s.
Let’s say when you accidentally caught up with an old pal, when you talk to your friends, or just passing by or living your lives — all these moments come in short bursts of time and eventually disappear. Snapchat is about living in the moment and having fun while doing so.
“Snapchat began as an escape from social media, where people could send photos and videos to their friends without the pressure of likes, comments, and permanence. By focusing on the camera, Snapchat lowered the barrier to self-expression and showed a new generation that everyone is creative.” Evan Spiegel @Axios
Recently Snapchat’s redesign has taken an unconventional approach for a social media app. Unlike Facebook where all content comes in one giant news feed of information, Snapchat segregates the social and media into different parts.
The left side of the app includes chats and stories shared with, or by, their friends. That’s the social part. Material shown on the app’s right side is now the media part . Snap , the parent company of Snapchat has decided that the media part must meet content and community standards, whether that material is produced by a newspaper, a television studio, the company’s in-house news and stories teams or so-called influencers. All must be vetted and approved.
Summary
Snapchat and Facebook are both social media platforms, but they handle it in different ways. Facebook clubs the social and media content based on your activity and in doing so social updates are often given lower priority, while Snapchat separates social and media content into different sections allowing user to consume social and media information differently. Though which information consumption model is best, requires further research to be commented on.
