I agree -- I'm starting to think all social media sites have a half-life. I guess I'm too old to understand snap chat. Like -- isn't it just text messaging w/ pictures? Aren't there already a million ways to do that without ads? Any youths want to weigh in?
I'm 30 and didn't really understand it, but I work with teenagers quite a bit. My generation was very excited about putting things online, permanently, a monument to our selves. Things like blogs, facebook, even twitter are pretty much permanent; you're putting your information and ideas out there for anybody to see. What I gather from kids now is that they don't care about permanence so much as connecting with people. So they're leaving FB for the most part, for ephemeral services like Snapchat and Whatsapp (another one I don't understand). They like the idea they can communicate with a single person and have it disappear. They won't be haunted by a bad picture (or naughty ones) the rest of their lives. They don't have to "think" about what they're doing (which I see as a problem, but they think this way). Nothing's permanent, so it's all about the raw conversation.
That said, as a tech guy, every one of the kids I talk to says something like "but I wish it did ___" or "but I'd really rather use ___ if it worked a certain way". I believe Snapchat is successful for maybe one more year, tops, until some other startup gets even more in touch with the latest trends. I would have taken the $3bn and run. FB's and Twitter's days are also numbered, judging by the teenager beliefs today.
For those wanting a good idea (I don't care about this space enough), teenagers are really interested in micro-celebrity. Some of their favorite bands, actors, etc. are local to them, are generally not big hits, etc. but communicate individually with them (even through Snapchat). One of Twitter's big reasons it worked was because of big celebrities communicating directly to fans. Kids now seem to not care at all about big celebrities. If you can find a way to even more easily connect smaller celebrities/bands to young fans and allow personalized interaction, you just found a potential next big thing.
