I may be completely ignorant here but how is Snapchat anonymous? I thought you shared content with your contact list... but maybe I'm missing something. Is it because Snapchat has no "profile" page a la Facebook?
It's not anonymous, but to the user it's ephemeral. You can make a pic, send it through snapchat, and be confident that regardless of the outcome (people loved it or hated it) they would never be able to see it again.
Traditional internet forums are anonymous and static. Snapchat flips that around.
> You can make a pic, send it through snapchat, and be confident that regardless of the outcome (people loved it or hated it) they would never be able to see it again.
Yeah, not so much. If there weren't things like screenshots, perhaps. A browse through Reddit's seedier parts proves this ephemerality a lie.
True, and the app itself doesn't actually delete the pictures off your device either. Still, the intention of the app is to share impermanent pictures, which is an interesting twist on things.
"Snapchat has changed the game. Its success has demonstrated that given the right offering, there is in fact mainstream demand for products that incorporate anonymity and ephemerality"
The author (moot) should revise the text as Snapchat is clearly ephemeral but not anonymous.
Traditional internet forums are anonymous and static. Snapchat flips that around.