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How Facebook and Snapchat are Broadening Their Appeal by Emulating Each Other’s Features
As a local digital agency, the team at Thunderbolt Digital take a keen interest in social media Surrey, and how the changing landscape of social media and its users can affect our clients and their online marketing tactics. Facebook and Snapchat are both household names at this point in time, but this doesn’t stop them from tweaking their existing services in order to keep their current user base as well as extend it; however, what’s interesting about the latest news is that both companies seem to be taking a leaf out of each other’s (face?)books in order to increase usage of their apps!
The media sharing app Snapchat has revealed a brand new feature this week called “Memories”, which makes saving snaps much easier, as well as allowing users to share media captured outside the app for the very first time; this means that pictures can be shared directly from a phone’s camera roll, instead of having to snap something new with Snapchat every time.
This move is far removed from the original premise of the app, which sees sent photos and videos only last for a limited amount of time before disappearing. Despite this, the general reaction to this announcement has been mostly positive; all Snapchat users have that one snap that they wished they’d saved and have been unable to recreate since!
This feature seems to be an effort to broaden its user base and appeal to an older audience, who can sometimes be confused by the app’s disappearing media and often want something more permanent, which “Memories” will certainly give them.
Conversely, Facebook is trialling something called “secret conversations” on their messenger app which uses end-to-end encryption and allows messages sent to self destruct after a while, much like media sent on Snapchat does (though as of yet Facebook cannot send videos, gifs or payments in this way).
Secret Conversations are set to be an opt-in feature, which can be used by those talking about more sensitive and private information, such as conversations surrounding health and finances. In line with this, messages can be set to be deleted after a set amount of time decided by the author, though this time can be delayed if the message is reported or flagged for abuse, in order to prevent people misusing the app for harassment.
Secret messages can currently only be used on one device per account as a way to keep things secure, though this may change as it is developed.
Both Snapchat and Facebook are making changes to allow their users greater choice; for Snapchat, those who enjoy sharing impermanent messages can continue to do so, but those who prefer to save their snaps, or share pictures taken in others apps can do that too; and for Facebook, messaging family and friends in a more secure way about more personal information is now more accessible without the use of even more third party messenger apps like Telegram.