[shalalala]

Someone needs to coin a term for businesses like Snapchat. They offer nil in the way of progress, yet act like they are all about progress. They offer no lasting value, yet you know they store all these snaps and will sell your info later through meta tags. They offer a free service, so you know you're the product. They target teenagers whose minds have not fully developed and sell their info to adults so they can advertise to them more effectively.

They should shut down their service, take the money they have, and make something that improves the world.

We don't really need another leech, or a shell vehicle for the rich to hedge in.

[calinet6]

"They offer nil in the way of progress, yet act like they are all about progress."

There's some lesson here in the value of distilling an experience to its bare emotional essence.

They did actually capture something of value, and created (perhaps by accident, perhaps intentionally) something that brings an unmistakeable humanity to what used to be cold and technological.

This is some sort of progress, I think. We could use more humanity in our technology. In fact I'd say it could be the next big set of problems to solve.

[AndrewKemendo]

They should shut down their service, take the money they have, and make something that improves the world

The problem is, if they did that they wouldn't have any money as it's all VC wrapped

[toomuchtodo]

> Someone needs to coin a term for businesses like Snapchat.

Psychopathic Hockeystick.

Please note I'm referring only to the company, and not its owners/founders when I coined this.

[nl]

Sorry, I think I'm dumb today.

They offer nil in the way of progress, yet act like they are all about progress.

What does this mean?

and will sell your info later through meta tags

What does through meta tags mean?

They should shut down their service, take the money they have, and make something that improves the world.

Communication doesn't improve the world? Why not?

We don't really need another leech, or a shell vehicle for the rich to hedge in.

What's the hedge here?

This post sort of nearly makes sense, but doesn't quite. Is it generated by a Markov chain?

[vezzy-fnord]

Pretty sure Snapchat falls under the definition of the archetypal cash cow.

They target teenagers whose minds have not fully developed and sell their info to adults so they can advertise to them more effectively.

Frankly I have no sympathy for such people, but I agree that ultimately Snapchat is a useless trend. It will be replaced soon enough.

[calinet6]

As a user of snapchat, I've found unexpected value in the type of interaction it offers. My entire family is on it: we communicate visually daily where we never communicated before. We don't have to worry about making the communication high quality or meaningful because it's ephemeral; the fact that the communication is happening at all is high quality and meaningful.

If it's replaced, whatever comes next will probably be informed by the human way in which snapchat communicates, and hopefully will build on the idea.

Just think of it as a mobile translation of a core communication concept: simply looking at someone and talking to them, which is by nature visual and ephemeral. Snapchat captures some of the core emotions and psychology there that nothing else before it had.

Just saying—the instinct is to see Snapchat as useless and valueless and an enigma of popularity and hive mentality. I don't think it is.

[unclebucknasty]

>We don't have to worry about making the communication high quality or meaningful because it's ephemeral; the fact that the communication is happening at all is high quality and meaningful.

Wow. There is value in a service because it enables meaningless communication. Is this what it's come to?

Perhaps it's a problem that your family didn't communicate before Snapchat. Perhaps it would be better to address that, rather than substitute meaningless communication, then call it good. Perhaps Snapchat is making you feel better now, but leaving you worse off in the long run--kind of like heroin. The more you use it, the emptier you feel.

>Snapchat captures some of the core emotions and psychology there that nothing else before it had.

How about actually taking time to visit with people and talk to them? How about having actual experiences with them? Do these capture core emotions? What is this idea that every human or social function has to have an app or be captured in a product (and monetized)? Why does the act of filling our human needs require interception and redirection for the sake of profit?

Snapchat is just one in a sea of products (including media, celebrity worship, reality shows, etc.) aimed at making life a series of distractions from the emptiness and meaninglessness that haunt us. Of course, these very distractions in lieu of pursuing thoughtful, meaningful lives and quality relationships leave us feeling even emptier; thus ever hungrier for the next distraction. A vicious cycle if ever there was one.

Snapchat is an empty tool of distraction, that happens to fit a culture which is pushing itself to crave ever more of the same. Period. Trying to credit it for filling some deep emotional need is like crediting the iceberg's mass for later slowing the Titanic's sinking. Snapchat isn't the solution for what ails us. It's the cause of it.

[nl]

Wow. There is value in a service because it enables meaningless communication. Is this what it's come to?

Err, it has always been thus. Even non-human social animals like chimpanzees use "meaningless communication" to reinforce social bonds.

How about actually taking time to visit with people and talk to them? How about having actual experiences with them? Do these capture core emotions? What is this idea that every human or social function has to have an app or be captured in a product (and monetized)? Why does the act of filling our human needs require interception and redirection for the sake of profit?

What gives you the right to be so judgemental? In the 19th century people thought civilisation was built letter writing, and latter the telephone call.

Communication is the essence of society, and that communication can take many forms. Daring to impose your own views of how communication should be done is to attempt to impose your own view of society on others.

Also: HN. Internet Forum. Why exactly aren't we taking time to visit with people and talk[ing]?

[unclebucknasty]

>Even non-human social animals like chimpanzees use "meaningless communication" to reinforce social bonds.

Reinforce, not supplant. Note that the grandparent mentioned that his family never communicated. Now they are happy with their "improved" meaningless communication.

Generally speaking, what are we giving up and what are we gaining by redirecting more and more of our interactions and relationships through these new channels? Are we really supplementing meaningful interaction, or are we replacing it?

>What gives you the right to be so judgemental?

What gives me the right to an opinion? I suppose the same thing that gives you the right to a counter-opinion.

>Daring to impose your own views of how communication should be done is to attempt to impose your own view of society on others

Ditto. You think we're moving in the right direction. I do not. Why am I the one who is imposing views? Why isn't it you? Why isn't it the companies who seek to change the way we communicate for their own profit? In fact, you are the ones who are arguing for change. If anything, I am questioning the change that you are "imposing" on me. I would encourage you to be a little more thougthtful about your position.

And, surely, you can think of moments in history when whole societies were moving in the wrong direction until a few "judgemental" people recognized it and "imposed their views" for the ultimate betterment of society as a whole? Do you really want to argue that we should all just go along like unthinking lemmings without questioning our direction?

>HN. Internet Forum. Why exactly aren't we taking time to visit with people and talk[ing]?

That's pedantic and trite. Surely you don't really believe that I am arguing that we should all unplug our telephones and abolish the Internet. Surely you don't believe that is the only remedy to the problem I presented.

[calinet6]

"his family never communicated"

This is ridiculous. You're making baseless assumptions.

What I said was that we communicate visually where we never communicated before: we didn't communicate visually on a daily basis because we live on opposite coasts. We communicate in a lot of other ways, but we hadn't communicated in this specific visual way in a long time, because we simply don't get the chance to fly out and see each other face to face that often.

We get a stream of our daily lives, fleeting moments of emotion and faces and events, truly deep levels of communication, that we did not have before. Snapchat added that. We're in fact happy with our improved meaningful communication.

Phone conversations are great and we do that too, but they're planned and orchestrated in a way Snapchat isn't. Facebook covers another angle, but it's public and permanent. In the sense of pure functionality, Snapchat introduced something actually new, and it's valuable, and it's meaningful. That's my and my parents' experience. To quote my father verbatim: "We're getting to see a side of you and your life we haven't seen in ten years."

You do, in fact, have a judgmental bent, and worse: you don't know what the hell you're talking about. I'm trying to elucidate a value that you're blind to due to your bias for the negative social effects, and instead of trying to understand it, you're trying to tell me that I'm wrong and making assumptions to prove your point. You could have asked questions, probed me about my family relationships and this new interesting method of communication, started a discussion, and been productive; instead you fought for your opinion in a vacuum. Talk about pedantic and trite.

Believe me, I'm the first to be wary of new technology and the multitude of complex side-effects that it brings to society, and I recognize that a change in the modality of our conversation has many of those problems. But you have to see the truth of the whole thing: look for the positive effects as well as the negative, and surely if society values something you should look at why, and how, and which strings of the human mind it plucks. You gotta look harder at this one.

[aswanson]

I find snapchat hilarious, almost as hilarious as the vc defense/commentary regarding their rejection of 3 mmm as rational. It's a good thing the founders got a partial cash out; but I think that this company will serve as iconic peak idiocy for this investment cycle. But fuck, I've been wrong before.

[hnriot]

you don't get it. FB's audience are aging out, they are too busy with their careers, dealing with newborns and aging parents. Snapchat is a brand that has an increasing number of new eyeballs to sell ads to. It's not anything to do with how much good snapchat is doing in the world, or how their 'service' is bringing a new benefit to humanity, all that matters is the next generation with purchasing power are looking at it.

[aswanson]

Like I said I've been wrong before. I recall thinking Zuckerberg was a fool for not taking yahoos offer for a billion. I was wrong, but I didn't know about partial liquidation back then. It's not as binary an outcome. Once you get f u money, might as well swing for the fences. Rock on, Spiegel and Murphy. I can't hate.

[sanxiyn]

Like pets.com?

[hnriot]

I'm sure snapchat isn't looking for your sympathy. What trend? Snapchat brings an age old mating ritual to the digital age in a way that's appealing to the age group that spends most of their daily energy trying to garner the attention of the opposite gender. There's no trend here, it's just life in the digital age.

...those same not fully developed minds that society thinks amply prepared to go into war to kill and maim. I'm pretty sure they can handle 1-10 seconds of naked body parts.