Snapchat has launched a new promotional campaign, where it has
highlighted how its platform is “different” from others in the present era of
social media.
Snapchat asserts that social media, in its “adolescence” age,
has begun to lose its essential purpose of connection and support. Instead,
according to Snapchat, social media platforms and the way we share our moments on
them, have become more curated now, and friends have started to feel more like
strangers.
Well, Snapchat is not really wrong here. But what is it that its platform is doing differently? One aspect that Snapchat could be seen as distinguishable from in its usage is the absence of a feed. Unlike other platforms, Snapchat’s goal is not to make a user’s content reach as many people as possible.
Another way that Snapchat poses itself as different is that
it gives users more freedom in posting a variety of content as it deletes the
content after a specific time by default. So there’s not much of a drive for
popularity, competition or perfection. Disappearing content also leaves less
room for spreading of misinformation, which is why Snapchat has barely ever
been in the kind of spotlight that Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram often receive
for controversies.
“Snapchat is not social media. It never was. In fact, it was
built as an antidote to social media,” the social media company states.
It is pretty creative and smart how Snapchat is marketing
itself as an antidote to the typical social media, while not changing a thing
about its platform to put itself out in this way.
