Introducing Nothing New. All they did was copy half of Snapchat's functionality and add the instagram ability to "edit" pictures. I don't get the point of all of this stuff sometimes. Is this what super smart and savvy people are working on in tech? Another way to send pictures to friends that isn't text, fb messenger, snapchat, kik, whatsapp, etc?
Edit: I am really wondering if I'm missing something here with my above post, not just trying to be a dick for no reason.
Completely agree. They are not doing anything even remotely innovative. Added direct messaging means nothing when the simple direct messaging channel has already evolved beyond just a picture/video. A techchrunch article said they are like Apple, not doing it first, but doing it the best. That's complete BS as well. It doesn't look or feel any different or better than FB messenger, iMessage, whatsapp, snapchat or any other messaging apps for that matter.
People are doing this too. It looks dumb, but inside there're lots of interesting technical challenges.
Some of the awe inspiring breakthroughs are often extremely boring technically. I started my career in the computational chemistry and was looking over the shoulder of the guys doing some really bleeding etch research on organic compounds simulation. Oh, man, do you know how boring it is for a programmer? You're looking at the handwritten prototype of the research paper, filled with quantum physics formulae and encode all this greek language into FORTRAN-IV. Then you run it for a week and either go collecting Nobel prize or finding bugs in your "program".
That's exactly right, and it's a great move on their part.
Instagram itself wasn't some grand innovation. It's an experience product, that's meant to be easy to use and fun. It's not here to cure cancer, it never pretended to, and it doesn't need to attempt to.
I feel the same way. I often wonder with all the bright minds and current innovations in tech, why we still continually try to come up with novel ways to send cat pictures over the internet. Surely there are more interesting uses for the vast technological resources available to this generation.
You're missing the most important question in all of this: interesting according to whom?
It's equivalent to someone that prefers non-fiction scientific educational TV shows, claiming that it's outrageous all of the money goes toward sitcoms or the next Avengers movie.
Reminds me of this Steve Jobs quote. Amusingly, you could substitute 'television networks' for 'social networks' and it would be a relevant argument today, despite being made 17 years ago:
"When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth." - Steve Jobs, Interview in WIRED magazine (February 1996)
Fair enough. These apps do have their target market, I just feel like we (myself included) could be doing more to help people rather than just keeping them entertained.
Does anybody know if they're planning on making this available via their third party API?
I've checked the current API docs [1] as well as the Google Group [2] and the StackOverflow Posts [3]. There's nothing mentioning it yet.
This would be an awesome feature to have available in third party apps, so that one could have it in other chat clients apart from the official iPhone app. Adium is one example, but there're probably even better solutions. After all, one of the most annoying things about WhatsApp is that I have to use my phone to answer messages or read messages. It just feels stupid to tap away on a small screen to send a digital message while I have a 27" screen and a full keyboard right in front of me. That is something where iMessage and Facebook messages are way better.
Also, there were, for quite some time, third party Instagram messaging solutions [4], and I'm really happy that they're finally implementing this straight into Instagram. Beforehand, you'd see people having discussions that were bordering on being private by continuously posting comments to an image. This happened all the time. Now these discussions can move into private space.
I'm pretty sure they won't make it available. They still don't allow uploading images to their service using an API, so I doubt they will allow to send messages.
After the Twitter example, APIs are not attractive to these kind of startups. If you give full capabilities to 3rd party developers, they're going to create clients for other systems and the startup will lose control over its content and how it's shown to users (ads).
I think snapchat's timeout feature is a novelty that attracted users, but people ultimately just want to send private messages to their friends. Not everything needs to be broadcasted, and that's part of the OG instagram userbase - people that wanted an alternative to the facebook feed.
What's wrong with texting though? My friends and I have been texting and group texting images and short video for years. Why do people like having an app for this?
Snapchat is the best way to have a quick conversation with someone that is photo-based. That is particularly useful for seeing someone's emotions outside of being face-to-face.
Text is dry. Snapchat lets me quickly message someone what I'm feeling.
It has almost nothing to do with disappearing messages.
Not having to manage and deal with all the images people send you all the time is not a novelty. Smartphones all assume that every picture you have on your phone is a prize that you want to save forever. Snapchat gives people a way to send pictures that just avoid all that.
See that's what I'm saying. Someone texts you a photo, it doesn't go into your photo list. It stays in your text convo. I'm all for data management and removing clutter, but I can think of 500 items to clear out before I consider private photo messages from my closest friends.
Snapchat's timeout feature is not just a novelty, is it allowing for a whole different type of digital communication. The sender does not have to worry about where their image might show up. It frees people to take goofy photos and act more naturally (as opposed to all the posed, staged shots on Instagram and Facebook).
I agree it frees people up to do the goofy, but as someone who's been doing the goofy my whole life, snapchat does nothing to add value in that respect. It just promotes it and now people understand the goofy.
Regardless if you are goofy or not SnapChat enables you to share that goofiness in a whole new way. You wouldn't send the stuff you send on SnapChat in a text or share it on Facebook.
And it's about much more than just being goofy. You share random things from your daily life that are interesting but not interesting enough to be sent in a text or be posted on Facebook.
I don't know why this misconception keeps getting propogated. If the motivation to save pictures is there then a person will save the pictures. I have to believe it's the fad. I mean poke had this same feature yet it never took off
> If the motivation to save pictures is there then a person will save the pictures.
Considering most "snaps" are sent between friends and family these days, it's important to understand that friends aren't fucking each other over to save pictures of cats with finger-painted mustaches.
Of course, if someone is dead-set on saving a picture from Snapchat then it's possible... but Snapchat isn't about sending dick pics anymore. I believe it's outgrown that, the same way when Vine started with was essentially an amateur porn broadcasting app. For the general public, Snapchat images appear and then they go poof, but I agree with you... it's hard to stop dicks from being dicks no matter how you send your photos.
But the one objective fact about the situation is that Snapchat is still the most convenient way to send photos and videos that are reasonably guaranteed to virtually disappear. Saving them out of Snapchat secretly isn't a priority nor is it trivial for 99% of people using the service.
the point is that assumption should always be made that anything you share on any service will be saved our available. I have to believe it's more the fad and brand vs this false sense of security
No, it's not that they are guaranteed to disappear. It's that there is no expectation for them to last. It is an ephemeral image that doesn't need to be saved or managed or taken with the gravitas that living in your camera roll or being posted for the rest of time has.
taking the perspective of the receiver is hard to justify as well. I mean really deleting a mms or just disabling it in any of the messaging services really is not that hard.
And yet, here we are with snapchat being hugely successful. Maybe you just don't understand what makes a product like this successful, and why things that are "not that hard" may be something that literally nobody does for a certain reason because they are hard enough.
im not saying its not hard and im not saying I dont' understand it, but to claim its something more than just the fad and brand is what im questioning.
You send random things in SnapChat since you know it won't clutter your receiver's phone. It enables a whole new type of conversation and I'm sorry if you don't understand that. Fad or not SnapChat is a big part of me and my friends' life right now.
I pay $50/month for unlimited calling, text, and data (5GB LTE speeds, then 2G) on T-Mobile. I pay outright for the phone (had a GalaxyNexus, moved to iPhone 5s). Its really not a bad deal.
With 20€ per month on Ireland (pre-payed) one can get 250Mb AND Free calls in the network + free texts AND the 20€ for calls to other networks http://www.meteor.ie/pay-as-you-go/anytime-all-in/?linkid=pa... (if you go contract, the 20€ get you 1Gb Internet + 200Mins + Unlimited texts)
Huh? MMS itself is completely irrelevant to the quality of the photo you send over it. If your phone's camera is good, the photo quality will be good also.
I wouldn't say it's completely irrelevant -- MMSes are heavily compressed by every phone OS I've ever used. Wikipedia lists a "recommended limit" of 300 kB[1], and Verizon's developer site lists a hard limit of 1.2 MB[2].
According to Wikipedia[1], "300 kB is the current recommended size used by networks due to some limitations on the WAP gateway side". While that is listed as "Citation Needed", other links from the the same search query lists sizes varying from 600KB to 1.2MB. A quick look at the files sizes at the images I've taken shows that most of my images are over 1000KB. So, there is some kind of re-sizing that needs to occur over SMS. Instagram and other similar services don't necessarily require such re-sizing, or possibly get around it by having you crop the image yourself, so the relative quality of the remaining portion remains higher quality as opposed to shrinking the entire image to fit the size restrictions.
1. They are the brand that reinvented the sharing model. They are more likely to stick to their core values
2. Facebook/Instagram can use the information about who you send to to expand their already vast profile of you.
3. Based on Snapchats word, your images are truly deleted from their servers after they've been viewed.
That said, I'll be testing out Instagram direct to see if it is truly a superior product but I imagine if they think of something good Snapchat will copy it and I will go back to my brand du jour.
"I am going to write an app that allows the user to send pictures to their contacts!"
I guess one must have a fair bit of userbase karma + mystique to successfully reinvent the wheel, to make a funnier-to-use wheel that actually gets used.
I don't really think we need social networks as they're now understood. About 10 years ago when MSN Messenger was popular, I had the idea of having an interactive contact list for one's cell phone. One where I could see that my friend is "in the shower, out in 10" or where I could send a picture to a contact, etc.
I'm very interested to see how this goes against SnapChat. I think it could either ruin SnapChat for good, or not make any impact at all because of the fanbase loyalty to SnapChat. It will be interesting to see, that's for sure.
Also, I haven't seen a clear explanation on their implementation when you try to "direct" someone that has not updated their app (don't have the Direct feature) yet. Does it warn you, queue the Direct for when they finally do update, doesn't let you use the feature with them at all, or what?
AFTER UPDATING: It looks like you guys are right, it allows you to send Direct to people who have not updated, so I imagine it just queue's it for them. Also, you cannot set expiration timers, and if you do a group message everyone in the group can see who is in the group (both unlike SnapChat). So, it looks like this will not probably not harm SnapChat at all.
I think this will pretty substantively impact Snapchat's moderate to less prolific users. Most people don't NEED their pictures to self-destruct, they weren't that embarrassing in the first place. This however, allows for more fun engagement after the initial picture sending and once users get a feel for that, people would opt for this I believe.
I agree, I think it will, at least somewhat, impact snapchat because the products are similar.
I'm sure that was the aim here, to create a product that took inspiration from snapchat. Given that it's one of the most popular apps out there with an insane amount of users, and we know that facebook already tried to buy it. I'm sure they didn't want to copy it outright, but if they can integrate some of it's features into their existing products, they may be able to steal some users.
I think it will fail, hard - just like Facebook Poke did. And that was when Snapchat was very, very early. Now it has a ton of momentum behind it, and this is hopeless.
Instagram's beauty was its simplicity. You took photos, edited them, and shared them with friends.
Post-facebook acquire they've introduced "features" that add very little to the service, copy competitors, and degrade the overall experience of Instagram.
wanted to say the same thing. Great product and good marketing and all, but that video is so dripping of hipsterismn, they even have hipster cars in there.
Ism: highly active and well-understood suffix that means, among other things: "manner of action or behavior characteristic of a (specified) person or thing" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/-ism
Actually this might have a minor impact on kik. Lots of Instagram users use kik to communicate, so this messaging tool could affect them more than snapchat. Snapchat still has the decaying images feature as it's main selling point,
This will have a huge impact on Snapchat, IMO. Instagram Direct allows you to keep a conversation going with close friends, which is much more engaging and fun. Snapchat does not allow for that. One of the reasons that I'm not as prolific on Snapchat is that I just can't know what the hell I'm going to take a picture of next in response to someone's Snapchat. This addresses that issue by allowing just one picture to be the instigator for a conversation. Obviously loyal Snapchat fans will still stay there but I think the less prolific Snapchatters will opt to send a picture this way rather than thru Snapchat.
Well that's the downside. But honestly I'm not going to sympathize very much because over 80% of my friends have iPhones and I am already biased to sending messages to them because iMessage and Photostream are such good products.
On another point unrelated to this thread Apple and Google really should work together to develop a single messaging and sharing API hosted from either of their clouds.
I'm guessing you're being facetious, but MMS (or whatever app-of-the-month it is) beats email by allowing you to view content inline and having better infrastructure (lower overhead for communication, richer data [so-and-so is typing]).
In my anecdotal experience apps beat out MMS because of carrier compatibility and poor service.
Everyone is comparing this to Snapchat or Twitter, but what about FB Messenger? Competing with another Facebook entity, but I guess FB wins either way now?
I do. Quite often, actually. Seriously the best way to share albums if both parties are on iOS. The only downside is it can definitely take up space as the device stores a copy of each image from each stream.
Photostream is really the end game for what sharing photos should be. You serve it on space that you rent privately from Apple. You have comments, likes, and filters. You can post photos of any size. Your social network is not being analyzed because Apple is selling you the space (iCloud) and the device (iPhone).
I suppose they already have the userbase. And it's not like there's much effort in copying a simple flow like Snapchat has. I'm pretty sure they (SC) have a patent on an app that goes straight to camera, amongst others though. Crazy.
Edit: I am really wondering if I'm missing something here with my above post, not just trying to be a dick for no reason.