You are right to be confused. "Social sharing" came out of Snapchat marketing department when it became obvious you couldn't build a long-term business on a product that was synonymous with sexting.

Snapchat's core is still revolving around soft erotic eye candy that's developed into a cottage industry at this point http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-arsenictv-snapchat-in... Now that they've got your attention there, they are bringing in media partners like BuzzFeed, Entertainment Weekly and celebrities http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-how-snapchat-built-a-... to fill up your feed with a stream of bite-size updates.

Peer-to-peer ephemeral messaging is no longer emphasized in the app, they are building a media destination to divert eyeballs away from TV, YouTube, Vine, Facebook or Twitter, in that rough order. Referring to ephemeral social messaging at this point as akin to bringing up Yahoo! as a directory of web links.

Not trying to be mean here, but I'm having quite the time watching you try to grok Snapchat. To me your argument reads like "why would I send someone a text message when I can call them?" when text messaging was first becoming popular.

When you have more than a handful of friends that you're trying to keep in touch with, are you really going to ask every single one of them what they're up to each day? Snapchat solves this in a fun way.

> When you have more than a handful of friends that you're trying to keep in touch with, are you really going to ask every single one of them what they're up to each day?

Good god why would I care?

I imagine this difference in attitude accounts for some of the confusion over snapchat's purpose.

> Good god why would I care?

If you're not interested in what your friends are up to, why are you friends with them in the first place? Maybe they're really just acquaintances?

Like you said, maybe it's a difference in attitude. Still, I recommend you giving it a shot to get a better idea of what it is. I also thought it was dumb at first.

> > > When you have more than a handful of friends that you're trying to keep in touch with, are you really going to ask every single one of them what they're up to each day?

> > Good god why would I care?

> If you're not interested in what your friends are up to, why are you friends with them in the first place? Maybe they're really just acquaintances?

if I would care about what every single friend of mine is doing each day, it would be difficult to live a life for myself.

Compare sitting at the bus stop alone or with a friend. Which one is more enjoyable? If you prefer to be alone, then maybe you already have too much social interaction and need more alone time. If you prefer to have some kind of personal connection with another human even when there's no obvious practical value in the content of what you're communicating, then I think that's what snapchat provides.

Most people crave this human interaction every day.

> Compare sitting at the bus stop alone or with a friend. Which one is more enjoyable?

The latter. But there's a big gap between "If you prefer to have some kind of personal connection with another human" and "are you really going to ask every single one of [your 20 friends] what they're up to each day?".

You don't have to care about what every single friend of yours is doing every single day.

I'm sure I don't have the typical use case, but as an expat, I have friends spread out all over the world. Usually I don't see anything from them on Snapchat, but when they're going on a hike somewhere beautiful, attending an event, or having fun otherwise, I get to see it and thereby "keep in touch". I get to see what my little cousins are doing at home as they grow up (which is quite annoyingly "snap back for a rate" or some nonsense I won't pretend to understand), and even see what their mother is cooking for dinner when she shares that.

If you don't like it, don't use it. But don't be fooled into thinking it's just pictures of lunch from people at their 9-5 office jobs. Even many of us with 9-5 jobs have something interesting to share, at least on an afternoon or weekend.

But how can you validate your own existence, if you don't have other lives to compare it against?! ;)

I think the whole phenomenon is fascinating - people these days can't experience anything without photographing it, or updating their status about it. It's as if they need to prove that it really happened.

Humble brag/narcissism. One of the main ingredients to fuel social networks.

It's not that it doesn't exist in physical gatherings, it's just way more concentrated online because of convenience.

Sometimes it's just a nice past time as well. Oh i'm sat waiting for the train, might as well see what everyone is up to today/last night.

I have friends I care about, but I don't need to know what they are up to every day any more than they need to know about me, let alone every hour of every day.

Quite an interesting concept of friends you have there.

That's probably not true. When you're just socializing in real life, you're probably sharing all kinds of meaningless "updates" about yourself. Statements, jokes, expressions, etc that aren't important individually, nobody wants to keep records of and you don't care if they get missed. You wouldn't ask your friends to tell you those things because they're so trivial, but they're still how people enjoy each other's company. That's a lot of what friends do when they're together - share minutia. To me, Snapchat is kind of like that but on the internet.

I think "solution in search of a problem" is a fine description, and not really a bad thing. Nobody says "I want a photo sharing app" and downloads Snapchat after doing some research. You get it because your friends have it, and you keep using it because you enjoy it. If your friends aren't using it, then you won't like it because there won't be anything to do.

> this just feels like a solution in search of a problem (except for sexting)

ahhh the old-millenial-stuck-in-2013 version of snapchat

Follow @ArsenicTV, while your finance buddies snap you insider merger and acquisition tips on stocks, and then tell me you "don't get Snapchat"

get w/ it

Snapchat is just another fad in the undying trend of reinventing email "in new and exciting ways."

don't you mean reinventing speech - the original form of communication?