| I tutored teenagers in physics and math for a while to make ends meet. And they love snapchat. They are also basically ready to be done with facebook. There are two reasons they prefer snapchat to facebook and texting, respectively, both of which basically come down to privacy: 1) Their parents are on facebook 2) They know that what they say today might look stupid tomorrow, and facebook (and the phone companies) save everything, forever. Basically, they have figured out that what they say when they are 13 will look ridiculous when they are 17. And what they say when they are 17 will be really cringe-worthy when they are in college. They also know that facebook's track record on privacy is awful, so even if they went through the trouble to create different types of friend lists, with different access settings, etc., facebook could just change everything tomorrow. I could easily see snapchat expanding to build an entire social network built around the "only see for 10 seconds and its gone" feature, and droves of teenagers moving onto it. If they do, facebook could be in serious trouble. |