Snapchat – Social Media Industry Assignment Help
Executive Summary:
This essay is a synopsis of the Social Media industry, this report entails a brief introduction of the industry and how it influences the people with its different features. This industry has different companies that allow users to connect with others and communicate with them. One of the main companies of this industry is Snapchat that has an unusual feature of sending messages or images to others that will disappear in a few seconds and allows the users to upload any picture or video on their story that will also disappear but after 24 hours. This report includes features of Snapchat both good and bad and a brief introduction of the Social Media industry.
Introduction:
There are numerous industries in the world today, among which there is one who has caught everyone’s attention and is used by almost everyone in the world. This is the Social Media industry that is rapidly evolving and developing every day, people are adopting the use of this industry in their lives. This industry can be used in every aspect of a person’s life and can benefit as if someone wants to start their business, they can use this platform to start or further expand their brands. People are using social media daily and it can be a powerful marketing tool for selling products and commodities (Drury, 2008). One of the main companies of this industry is Snapchat that is being extensively used by the youth, they are the target audience of the majority of the companies. This application allows a user to send an image or a video to others and it instantly disappears after the other user has seen it and the users can also upload a picture on their story that will disappear after 24 hours. This report gives the reader an insight into the application and briefly describes the aspects the application excels and fails at.
Snapchat:
Snapchat is a mobile application that was introduced by the company, Snap Incorporation. This mobile application offers users to communicate with others via images and videos. The services allow the people to send their selfies or pictures to their relatives, family, and friends with a tag line but the picture will disappear after ten seconds. This unusual service that hasn’t been introduced before attracted many users and Snapchat is now among the leading mobile applications currently (Matthies & Parvin, 2017). Similarly, the specific function of Snapchat that allows user to upload their pictures for a total of twenty-four hours has been adopted by Facebook and Instagram (Alhabash & Ma, 2017). Snapchat was established in 2011 by 2 Stanford students, Bobby Murphy and Evan Spiegel, today Snap Incorporation is estimated to be over nineteen million dollars and rejected to sell their company at three billion dollars to Facebook (Colao, 2014; Rusli & MacMillan,2013; Nusca, 2015 as cited in Anderson, 2015). Currently, there are more than a hundred million users globally with approximately a quarter of the users are the youth, aging between eighteen to twenty-nine years old (Duggan, 2013)
Snapchat as a marketing tool:
Among other social media application, Snapchat can also be used by the business owner or brands to attract customers. According to Kirkpatrick (2016) an e-magazine, Marketing Dive used to Snapchat to lure more customers’ attention and they were successful in doing so and due to the mobile application, their business operations were significantly enhanced (as cited in Garnica, 2017). Through snapchat many companies can connect with people and it helps the other business owners to make their brands known to the customers. The companies or brands can use this application to instantly respond to any questions or queries of the customers. The way through which Snapchat communicates with its customers is informal due to which the users are quickly attracted and can relate themselves to it. The customers who follow different brands on Snapchat might get convinced of the validity of the product because these brands upload stories of their commodities and display many features of the product through videos or pictures (De Grave, 2016). Snapchat also entails multiple features like sponsored and paid content through which the business owners can market their products, through this the Snap Incorporation makes a profit (Garnica, 2017).
Privacy Management:
The main feature of Snapchat is the picture that the users send each other disappears right after the user receives it and the same is the case with messages; the picture or video that is uploaded as a story by the user also disappears after twenty-four hours. Through this feature, the privacy of the users isn’t out in the open (Bayer, Ellison, Schoenebeck & Falk, 2015). This feature also motivated the users to be express themselves more open to others (Choi & Sung, 2018 as cited in Hollenbaugh, 2019). According to Bayer et al., (2015), a user’s connected friend can only see h/her story, unknown people who aren’t added in the user’s friend list can not see the individual’s story or send any message. Furthermore, there is a feature of ‘screenshot’ in Snapchat that is when someone from user’s friend list screenshots h/her story, the user is notified of this breach of privacy by the application and the user can remove that individual from the friend list (Hollenbaugh, 2019).
Security Issues:
Snapchat is known for its privacy management and individuals prefer this application to communicate, however, a while ago there was a security issue with the mobile application where Snapchat API was leaked, the API permits any individual to directly communicate with the applications’ users without even using Snapchat’s mobile service. Another main security issue of Snapchat was the introduction of a new feature called ‘Find my Friends’, the update permits the users to seek out friends on the application through sending mobile numbers in their address book to check if someone in their friend list had an account on the application. The users could not disable this feature and this led to hacking in 2013’s New year’s party where hackers illegally uploaded multiple mobile numbers and individuals’ information (Defossez, 2014). Many a time the individuals have breached Snapchat security and privacy, for instance, enabling airplane mode on the phone between loading of a text or image on Snapchat and opening so an individual can screenshot the text and the user would not be notified. Few of the students also attempted to breach the security policy of Snapchat and were successful in exposing certain data that was then deleted information of the users (Lao, Mao & Sy, 2017).
Conclusion and Recommendations:
Today, Social Media is booming at a speed that no other industry has ever evolved at this rate. The majority of the households today in the world are using social media in their lives, it can be used in anything i.e. to expand or start a business, for education, for health and many more. This industry was introduced to the world a couple of decades ago and now it has taken its place everywhere in the world. This industry has few companies that are Facebook, Instagram, Google, Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube. This report discussed Snapchat and explained briefly its services and use. This application allows the user to upload a picture or video on their story that will disappear after twenty-four as well as to send a message or image to other users that will disappear instantly after its sent. There are two main aspects in which Snapchat excels at that is (i) Marketing tool and (ii) Privacy Management; Snapchat is a useful tool for marketing, it helps start-ups or business owners to display their products to the users using different filters and the main thing is that the picture or videos of the products are real. Snapchat’s main feature is to delete messages after they are sent to others, this builds trust in the users and makes the application more consumer-friendly.
References:
Alhabash, S., & Ma, M. (2017), ‘A Tale of Four Platforms: Motivations and Uses of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat Among College Students?’, Social Media and Society, 3(1), doi: 10.1177/2056305117691544
Anderson, E. (2015), ‘Getting Acquainted with Social Networks and Apps: Snapchat and the Rise of Ephemeral Communication’, Library Hi Tech News, 32(10), 6-10, doi: 10.7282/T3P84DVR, Research Gate Database
Bayer, J., Ellison, N., Schoenebeck, S., & Falk, E. (2015), ‘Sharing the small moments: ephemeral social interaction on Snapchat’, Information, Communication & Society, 19(7), 956-977, doi: 10.1080/1369118x.2015.1084349
De Grave, P. (2016), ‘Integrating Snapchat In Companies’ Marketing Strategy’, 1-72, Retrieved on 16 January 2020, Retrieved from https://lib.ugent.be/fulltxt/RUG01/002/273/854/RUG01-002273854_2016_0001_AC.pdf
Defossez, D. (2014), ‘The Privacy of Snapchat’, 1-8, Retrieved on 16 January 2020, Retrieved from http://www.cs.tufts.edu/comp/116/archive/fall2014/ddefossez.pdf
Drury, G. (2008), ‘Opinion piece: Social media: Should marketers engage and how can it be done effectively?’, Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice, 9, 274-277, doi: 10.1057/palgrave.dddmp.4350096
Duggan, M. (2013), ‘Additional Analysis’, blog post, Pew Research Center, Retrieved on 16 January 2020, Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2013/10/28/additional-analysis/
Garnica, T. (2017), ‘A Snapchat Marketing Perspective: Examining the Personality Traits and Motives that Predict Attitudes Toward and Engagement with NonSponsored and Sponsored Content in Snapchat’, 1-97, Retrieved on 16 January 2020, Retrieved from https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6567&context=etd
Hollenbaugh, E. (2019), ‘Privacy Management Among Social Media Natives: An Exploratory Study of Facebook and Snapchat’, Social Media and Society, 5(3), doi: 10.1177/2056305119855144
Lao, C., Mao, C., & Sy, A. (2017), ‘Security Analysis on Snapchat’, 1-24, Retrieved on 16 January 2020, Retrieved from https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.857/2017/project/1.pdf
Matthies, N., & Parvin, S. (2017), ‘An Evaluation of Snap Inc. and its Recent Decision to Go Public’, Journal of Student Research, 2-17, Retrieved on 16 January 2020, Retrieved from https://www.umflint.edu/sites/default/files/groups/Research_and_Sponsored_Programs/SRC/2017/n.matthies-s.parvin.pdf
