Snapchat adds free phone number verification to its list of SDK perks(techcrunch.com)
techcrunch.com
Snapchat adds free phone number verification to its list of SDK perks
https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/23/snapchat-adds-free-phone-number-verification-to-its-list-of-sdk-perks/
6 comments
Can Snapchat survive in a world with TikTok? I'm genuinely curious what folks thoughts are.
Everyone I know that uses Snapchat has migrated to TikTok, but I personally have limited insight into these dynamics. From my perspective, even though the sharing dynamics are different, TikTok seems to capture and hold much greater attention.
Everyone I know that uses Snapchat has migrated to TikTok, but I personally have limited insight into these dynamics. From my perspective, even though the sharing dynamics are different, TikTok seems to capture and hold much greater attention.
I'd say they can -- especially with the Gen Z group. Snapchat is used to produce videos, images, and texts for either: all your friends (stories), a select subset of your friends (private stories), a subset of that subset (subsequent private stories), specific friend groups, etc.
With TikTok, you're publishing to the world; with Snapchat you're publishing to your world.
With TikTok, you're publishing to the world; with Snapchat you're publishing to your world.
well said -- There's a fundamental difference in TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, etc and Snapchat. Snapchat is heavily focused on private (one person, small private group) content in contrast with the other networks which mostly focus on public content.
> Snapchat is heavily focused on private (one person, small private group)
Private secondary Instagram accounts (finstas) for smaller circles and Instagram's "share only to 'close friends'" features are taking a lot of that Snapchat market over.
Private secondary Instagram accounts (finstas) for smaller circles and Instagram's "share only to 'close friends'" features are taking a lot of that Snapchat market over.
I still don't see Instagram used as a replacement for text messaging like Snapchat is for many people (again, just my experience in the college-age demographic). Snapchat themselves don't seem to want to be a messaging app though, probably because the path to ad revenue and real profitability is in an algorithmic feed.
Anecdotally, in my age group (College / new grads in Northeastern USA) Snapchat occupies a slightly different segment from TikTok (rant incoming...)
TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook are all places where people share more public / curated content, whether that's a silly video you made, a meme, or a little more curated photo of something exciting you're doing. Regardless of the content, there's a big focus on reputation and superficial interactions (likes, comments, etc.)
In contrast, Snapchat is still extremely popular for private communication (group chats, private messaging). For many college-age people, Snapchat is closer to an alternative to text messaging -- people heavily use the editing and multimedia features in creative ways that you couldn't do with normal SMS (For example, drawing over an image, circling something, overlaying another image, typing out a sentence over an image). Snapchat still has a consistent user base here because they've continually focused on improving the chat features. One example of this phenomenon: Whenever I met new people in college, we exchanged 1) Phone numbers 2) Snapchat accounts, since those are the primary methods for private communication for many. My snapchat friends list is nearly 1:1 with my phone contact book for anyone I met socially.
Instagram competes with Snapchat (and is arguably winning) on any feature that focuses on public sharing, such as the "stories" feature -- And for good reason, since Instagram as a platform has been designed from the start around public sharing. Similarly, TikTok will definitely beat Snapchat on the curated public video content, because that's just never what Snapchat was good at.
Only time will tell whether the smaller user base that is hyper-loyal to Snapchat for private messaging is large enough to justify their insane valuation, but I don't think Instagram or TikTok have really captured Snapchat's core value in private messaging.
TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook are all places where people share more public / curated content, whether that's a silly video you made, a meme, or a little more curated photo of something exciting you're doing. Regardless of the content, there's a big focus on reputation and superficial interactions (likes, comments, etc.)
In contrast, Snapchat is still extremely popular for private communication (group chats, private messaging). For many college-age people, Snapchat is closer to an alternative to text messaging -- people heavily use the editing and multimedia features in creative ways that you couldn't do with normal SMS (For example, drawing over an image, circling something, overlaying another image, typing out a sentence over an image). Snapchat still has a consistent user base here because they've continually focused on improving the chat features. One example of this phenomenon: Whenever I met new people in college, we exchanged 1) Phone numbers 2) Snapchat accounts, since those are the primary methods for private communication for many. My snapchat friends list is nearly 1:1 with my phone contact book for anyone I met socially.
Instagram competes with Snapchat (and is arguably winning) on any feature that focuses on public sharing, such as the "stories" feature -- And for good reason, since Instagram as a platform has been designed from the start around public sharing. Similarly, TikTok will definitely beat Snapchat on the curated public video content, because that's just never what Snapchat was good at.
Only time will tell whether the smaller user base that is hyper-loyal to Snapchat for private messaging is large enough to justify their insane valuation, but I don't think Instagram or TikTok have really captured Snapchat's core value in private messaging.
The popularity of widely-adopted social media apps tends to cycle with 4-8 year periodicity, roughly in line with high school / college cohorts. By that logic, Snapchat’s time is nearly up. TikTok will probably be popular for another 4 years until something else takes its place.
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I really hope that Snapchat can build out this platform. I love their core services (chatting and stories), and would trust them significantly more as a sign-in partner compared to Facebook or Google.
Why do you trust them more? Is it just because of their relatively small size compared to the big players?
Personally I wouldn't touch that company even with a barge pole. Their business model is no different than the big players, except their ads seem to be even more noxious than those peddled by the big players. Google & Facebook have a wide range of ads, both good products as well as trash, while Snapchat seems to be very focused on trashy clickbait with little valuable content.
Their privacy situation is also a major problem and is not GDPR compliant (not saying the others are, but that still doesn't excuse them with breaking EU regulations).
They are extremely hostile to third-party developers with significant obfuscation efforts around their private API. They are very likely to "pull a Twitter" when it comes to restricting access to their currently open APIs and leave developers stranded. Twitter also used to be very friendly towards developers, before abruptly shutting down most of their APIs and rendering products built on them completely useless (or neutered beyond any significant value), sometimes destroying entire business built around their platform.
Their lunch is also being eaten by Instagram, which puts them in a risky position with regards to profitability and increases the likelihood of them doing something nasty to try turn the ship around at the expense of developers who committed to the platform.
Personally I wouldn't touch that company even with a barge pole. Their business model is no different than the big players, except their ads seem to be even more noxious than those peddled by the big players. Google & Facebook have a wide range of ads, both good products as well as trash, while Snapchat seems to be very focused on trashy clickbait with little valuable content.
Their privacy situation is also a major problem and is not GDPR compliant (not saying the others are, but that still doesn't excuse them with breaking EU regulations).
They are extremely hostile to third-party developers with significant obfuscation efforts around their private API. They are very likely to "pull a Twitter" when it comes to restricting access to their currently open APIs and leave developers stranded. Twitter also used to be very friendly towards developers, before abruptly shutting down most of their APIs and rendering products built on them completely useless (or neutered beyond any significant value), sometimes destroying entire business built around their platform.
Their lunch is also being eaten by Instagram, which puts them in a risky position with regards to profitability and increases the likelihood of them doing something nasty to try turn the ship around at the expense of developers who committed to the platform.
I'm not a huge Snapchat fanboy, but some of this doesn't make much sense.
>their ads seem to be even more noxious
I don't think I've ever seen an ad in Snapchat. It's all buried in the Discover page that nobody uses anyway. As opposed to, ahem, Insta which injects an ad into every story you view.
>They are extremely hostile to third-party developers with significant obfuscation efforts around their private API.
That's kinda, you know, the entire point of their app. It's all geared around ensuring the user's privacy -- ensuring snaps are ephemeral, not stealthily recorded or captured. Of course they're jumping through hoops to defend their private API.
>a risky position with regards to profitability
Is it? https://otp.tools.investis.com/clients/us/snap_inc/SEC/sec-s...
>their ads seem to be even more noxious
I don't think I've ever seen an ad in Snapchat. It's all buried in the Discover page that nobody uses anyway. As opposed to, ahem, Insta which injects an ad into every story you view.
>They are extremely hostile to third-party developers with significant obfuscation efforts around their private API.
That's kinda, you know, the entire point of their app. It's all geared around ensuring the user's privacy -- ensuring snaps are ephemeral, not stealthily recorded or captured. Of course they're jumping through hoops to defend their private API.
>a risky position with regards to profitability
Is it? https://otp.tools.investis.com/clients/us/snap_inc/SEC/sec-s...
When viewing people's stories all at once I feel like I get semi-NSFW ads in between every person's story, which makes me want to just leave the app.
Maybe it's a UI thing. I only watch individual stories, from the left pane, because I really don't care about watching someone's story who I haven't talked to in six months -- if they're scrolled out of that view I probably don't care about them that much.
Yeah that makes sense. I don't use Snapchat much so when I go on every few days I just like to see everyone's stories in a row then exit.
> I don't think I've ever seen an ad in Snapchat. It's all buried in the Discover page that nobody uses anyway (emphasis mine)
But isn’t that a bit of a problem when it comes to ads where you want people to see them if you want to get paid? So they’re bound to increase their ad intrusiveness at some point and with the quality of ads in there I’m not sure people will put up with it.
> It's all geared around ensuring the user's privacy
Security by obscurity doesn’t really work though, it’s always going to be a game of cat & mouse and leaks are bound to happen. On the other hand, their current approach of obfuscation prevents a lot of valid & non-malicious use-cases like desktop clients, scheduled posts, etc.
> Is it?
Instagram still seems to be crushing them when it comes to active users, plus Facebook has the ability to run it at a loss for an insane amount of time if they wanted to, letting the competition (such as Snap) starve to death.
But isn’t that a bit of a problem when it comes to ads where you want people to see them if you want to get paid? So they’re bound to increase their ad intrusiveness at some point and with the quality of ads in there I’m not sure people will put up with it.
> It's all geared around ensuring the user's privacy
Security by obscurity doesn’t really work though, it’s always going to be a game of cat & mouse and leaks are bound to happen. On the other hand, their current approach of obfuscation prevents a lot of valid & non-malicious use-cases like desktop clients, scheduled posts, etc.
> Is it?
Instagram still seems to be crushing them when it comes to active users, plus Facebook has the ability to run it at a loss for an insane amount of time if they wanted to, letting the competition (such as Snap) starve to death.
> Security by obscurity doesn’t really work though
Obscurity is a completely cromulent, and actually decently effective (as clearly evidenced by Snap), stage to a defense in depth architecture.
Obscurity is a completely cromulent, and actually decently effective (as clearly evidenced by Snap), stage to a defense in depth architecture.
> They are extremely hostile to third-party developers with significant obfuscation efforts around their private API.
Because of this, that's why there's no bots on Snapchat for a long time (yet). Bots have proliferated all over TikTok, Instagram and Twitter since they became mainstream and still to this day.
Snap already has official SDKs for third-party developers for years that allow you to deal with login which they control that allows them to expand out into other apps, for example.
Because of this, that's why there's no bots on Snapchat for a long time (yet). Bots have proliferated all over TikTok, Instagram and Twitter since they became mainstream and still to this day.
Snap already has official SDKs for third-party developers for years that allow you to deal with login which they control that allows them to expand out into other apps, for example.
Unless you’re building a social app for the connected youth, I can’t imagine a more negative signal for a mobile app than to be associated with Snapchat. Even Facebook can be quite dubious, but at least they have users in all demographics.
ok boomer. I see that point for Fb, but Snapchat?
What I'm seeing here is that if an app has the Snapchat SDK I won't install it or will delete it. I have no interest in sharing my phone number with Snapchat.
This is a truly hilarious---nay... ridiculous--way of describing "our login sdk also handles stuff like phone number verification".