You may have already heard about – a fuss free image and video sharing application for iOS and Android that allows users to share media quickly and confidentially between friends and other Snapchat users.
The unique feature of the service surrounds the fact that these messages “self-destruct” after a single viewing, with each having a maximum length of 10 seconds. This apparent confidentiality has been a huge hit, especially amongst younger users. Some commentators have claimed this to be down to its inherent “parent-proof” set-up, allowing full privacy for the more secretive side of growing up. Indeed, the service has become synonymous with “sexting”, provoking understandable concern from parents around child protection and how to go about monitoring content that is simply not around for long.
However, these criticisms could well be unfair for a service which is seeing 150m photos and videos shared daily (to put this in perspective, Instagram recent figures are at around 40m photos uploaded daily). Snapchat’s CEO recently stated that he did not believe sexting was responsible for the app’s impressive growth, instead the result of a younger generation finding a unique voice through the service – “I don’t think that’s how the service is used typically, It’s a lot more about communicating where you are, what you feel”.
Indeed, Snapchat seems to offer a much more personal experience that traditional one-on-one communication such as texting or emailing, whilst simultaneously being social in nature but without the privacy drawbacks associated with a platform like Facebook.
That said, the company have taken steps to prevent the very obvious flaws in this privacy, for instance alerting a user when a recipient takes a screenshot on their phone of an incoming message. There is also a guide for parents concerned about abuse of the closed system.
For now Snapchat certainly seems to have captured the imaginations of a young generation, but one thing that is certain is that these concerns are likely to gather pace as the application grows in popularity.
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