Let’s start from the beginning.
Back in the early November of this year, reports surfaced that Snapchat had been offered $3 billion by Facebook. They turned down the offer expecting that 2014 would boost their value.
Fast forward to December 10th when Twitter introduced that pictures could now be sent in direct messages (DMs). The next day Instagram (owned by Facebook) announced that they now had Instagram Direct, a way for their users to share photos to individuals and groups.
Interesting. There’s been a lot of hubbub about Snapchat lately and its usage among Millennials. So much so that the major players like Facebook and Twitter have started to look to ways to incorporate picture messaging into their services. A great thing for users. We all love pictures and making them easier to share and display doesn’t harm us at all. Well except for the fact that it will eventually be used to advertise to us in some way or form. (see in feed Twitter picture previews).
I’m not sure people understand that appeal of Snapchat. It’s a way to send quick pictures, normally of things you wouldn’t want people to have or would waste the time to post. It’s the digital equivalent of walking down the street with someone and saying “Hey! Look at that!” and walking away. It’s not important enough to take an actual picture of and not quite something that should be ignored.
Instagram has become a place where, for the most part, they are pictures that we would like to keep. Pictures that we take the time to edit and filter to create something that we are proud of. And since we’re proud of it we share it with everyone we can. I’m not sure right now how much I’ll use Instagram Direct, or anyone for that matter. Maybe baby pictures? But people aren’t as worried about security of that stuff now. Dick pics to celebrities? Yeah, that will probably happen a lot.
Twitter on the other hand, has a very real use. Being able to DM pictures is another alternative to sending it in text messages, emails or even Facebook messages. But other than that, I can’t see it.
Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter all cater to their own niche which makes them powerful in their own ways. This means that as long as they continue to be the best at what they do, they’ll have no reason to worry about the things that the other ones do. I can’t say this for certain but, when they all start doing the same thing, well that’s when we won’t be using all of them anymore.
Bearing the Untold Story. 