How Snapchat took over Yale

4chan has a very similar dynamic vis-a-vis ephemerality and lowering social inhibitions. On 4chan nothing is saved (internally) and threads disappear minutes after people stop posting actively in them. This was the first thing I thought of when hearing (just now) about Snapchat: "Oh, it's like 4chan."

My 12 year old and her group of friends are hooked on Snapchat. No idea it had reached the University/College level. My understanding is the kids love it because several parents insist that their children never delete their texts until the parent has reviewed all of them each night.<p>People will share more when they know that content goes away. Makes a lot of sense but would have never thought of it that way prior.

<i>Since snaps disappear seconds after they are opened, users feel comfortable sending spontaneous and personal messages that they would not want ingrained into digital histories.</i><p>I donno but taking a screenshot and posting it on FB isn't very difficult. Do people really believe the images 'disappear'?

Nice article - It seems lazy to me when people hastily assume snapchat is only used for sexting.<p>From my experience with younger siblings and their friends, it seems much more mainstream among high schoolers and is genuinely being used as a legitimate communication tool, not just a sexting app.<p>Is this true or do you think it does lend to more of a sexting crowd/behavior?

the best part of this article is that we learn even yale undergraduates have no idea how statistics work. "i estimate that the contacts in my phone are a representative sample." based on what? the fact that you want to make generalizations?

I hope I'm not coming off as a conspiracy nut, but I can't see the US Government being too keen on something like this that's truly untraceable.<p>IANAL, but it seems to me that every service or software that is used for personal communication is forced by the Feds to allow accessibility for wiretapping circumstances.<p>Of course, I'm completely against it and I believe the situation is completely untenable for them to persist, but I don't think a social picture app will be the ones to stand tall on user privacy.

I'm curious now, is anyone over college age (say, 25+) using this thing? The way it's based on impermanence intrigues me more and more, but no one I know's on it yet.

Given the fact you can send out messages to multiple recipients, how do they stop it from being bombarded by spammers?

quick tip for the author: If you are doing a 2x2 grid, the convention is you want better to be up and to the right. So you want snapchat to be in the upper right quadrant. I was initially confused when I glanced at your table and thought "Morse code is the best solution?"