News Update: Snapchat Video Eats the World

By Bryan Bennett and Christina Gaines | @stinaegaines  

Snapchat is a special little platform. (And by little, I mean the exact opposite.)

It’s a medium that uses photos and video as communication - as opposed to other big dogs, it’s not solely where memories are chronicled and stored for safekeeping. On Snapchat, its developers are as focused or more so focused on the creation of content rather than its consumption. The temporary documentation is used to spark conversation, rather than capture it.

According to Bloomberg Technology, the app confirmed Thursday a proud 10 billion daily video views. More than a third of Snappers fuel the surge. That’s up 20% since February. Yes, February.

But that isn’t important because the audience is composed of just a bunch of kids, right? Not totally pertinent to your business? Actually, no. According to a study from 2014, 77% of college students were using Snapchat. Guess what - about half of those kids are out of college by now. Oh yeah, and over 70% said they would open a Snap from a brand they had never even heard of.

Powerful stuff.

Snapchat‘s 10 million views beats out Facebook’s 8 million views, but let's be honest - they weren’t truly measured on even playing fields. Many of Facebook's views are switched on through autoplay as you scroll through your timeline. 3 seconds later, that random video that slid past you is Facebook’s version of a “view.” Well played, Zuckerberg.

On the other hand, Snapchat counts a view as any video that is consciously opened...Though same may argue the new update makes it a little difficult to passive-aggressively skip certain people’s Stories due to the rolling Story feature.

So, can it be monetized? That remains to be seen. (No pun intended.) Nielsen, the folks that tell you how many people watched Game of Thrones on Sunday night, just jumped into the ever more relevant business of measuring Snapchat ads.

Meanwhile, Snapchat has continued to evolve and innovate. They cleaned up the interface to make it easier to navigate. They allow you to send stickers, swap faces and become a dog for a few seconds. Most importantly, perhaps, they allow you to move the conversation to a phone call without exiting the app.  

Here at Social Media Delivered, we do quite a lot of Snapchatting. Everything from our writing sessions, to Pho lunch trips, to an update on our new office pup, becomes immortalized. Well, for the next 24 hours at least.

And that's kind of the beauty of the whole thing. It is current, it is engaging, and it starts conversations instead of just being the further ramblings of one lone soul. It’s fleeting, it’s exciting, and encourages people to check back daily so they don’t miss out.

Here is the question we have. Will Snapchat follow the below typical lifecycle of social media platforms?

Typical Lifecycle of Social Media Platforms

1) Cool techies adopt new platform.

2) Old platform gets highlighted on Good Morning America.  

3) Cool teen gets invitation from mom to join scrapbooking group on old platform.

4) Cool teen goes online to find new platform that mom isn't part of.

5) Teen goes to college and documents entire life on new platform.

6) College graduate gets a job and rehashes glory days on platform that now contains the last 8 years of their life.

7) Parent realizes they have no idea how to use the new social media platform they are talking about on Good Morning America.

8) Parent invites all their kid’s friends’ parents to join an online scrapbooking group.

Let us hope not.