Battle of Sharing: Snapchat vs Instagram
EDIT: This piece has been published to Business Insider, Engadget and more.
There’s a f**king war zone in the social space, two tech giants are battling it out to be the ultimate destination for millennial’s to share.
Authors Note (DISCLAIMER): I’m talking from my own uses and observations from what I've learnt and seen. I can’t talk from a perspective from a different race, country etc. I’m talking about the general sense of teenagers that live in a first world country. I’m 15 and from Australia.
If you don’t know, if you went to a festival or some sort of special event (holiday or some place you’d love to share to make your friends jealous) and you wanted to share that moment, there are a number of options to choose from:
Facebook? Unless it’s something to do with family or making me look like a good samaritan then no way I’m posting it on there.
Instagram? Well, I used to post every photo on here but now it’s different. I want to but I have to first take a couple of photos, pick the best quality one, put it through a white boarder app, maybe a filter (black & white? to match all my other photos) and if it will look clean on my profile, then okay.
But, I’m at a festival right now and I wan’t to just open my camera, snap a couple of photos and share them privately to people I want right away.
Only if there was an ap- BOOM! Snapchat stories baby!
Why? Imma lay it down in millennial style (short attention span dot points)
- There’s no social pressure. No likes, no comments, just views that only you can see.
- It’s quick and easy. Open Snapchat and take a photo, add it to story. Now all your friends can be jealous in real-time that they couldn't go to the party because they had to study like a good boy. Instagram, is a lengthy process to say the least.
- It’s the place now. Instagram is getting a bit.. a bit.. a bit too old. I hate to say it, Snapchat is the hottest thing out and it’s where all your friends are constantly checking, they may check Instagram once or twice a day but their checking Snapchat 20 times a day.
- Ephemeral. When you’re about post a Instagram photo, you will feel this pressure. It’s a big event. When you’re adding a photo/video to Snapchat story, it’s seamless.
- Caption. There’s something so simple and eye catching with the Snapchat feature of captions that everybody loves. People would literally choose to share on Snapchat compared to Instagram just for the caption feature.
- You know who’s watching. Throughout high school or college, people like feeling cool, like sharing things that make them feel cool. Knowing who saw your post gives that person 10x confidence because the person that they wanted to see their post had to physically hold down their name to view what they posted. It’s complicated but if you’re teen savvy, you’ll get it.
There’s so much more finer reasons why choose Snapchat over Instagram but I’ll leave it here for now.
Snapchat is capturing and will dominate the millennials of this generation. It gives us an access to a persons camera roll, it’s raw, unedited photos and videos that’s so intriguing. The app is built for digital natives, in my opinion perfect; not for the mobile first but the mobile only generation.
