WhatsApp already ruined Snapchat's growth once. WhatsApp Status, your Snapchat Stories clone, now has 450 million active daily users compared to 188 million Snapchat. That's despite the fact that 24-hour vanishing slides lose tons of features, including augmented reality self-masks, animated GIFs, or custom avatars such as Bitmoji. A sufficiently good version of Stories was conveniently integrated into the messaging application that is loved in the developing world, where Snapchat has not had massive success. Snapchat actually lost the total number of daily users in the second and third quarter of 2018, and even lost the rest of users from the rest of the world in the second quarter, despite the fact that late-stage social networks trust their growth.
That's why it's so surprising that WhatsApp has not done it. Copy Snapchat's other great feature, ephemeral messaging. When chats can disappear, people feel free to be themselves: stupider, more vulnerable, more expressive. For teens who have deliberately departed from the permanence of the Facebook profile timeline, there is a sense of freedom in the ephemeral. You do not have to worry about old things coming back to torment or embarrass you. Snapchat mounted this idea to become a cultural element for the younger generation.
However, at this moment, WhatsApp only allows you to send photos, videos and permanent texts. There is a Dispatch option, but it only works for one hour after a message is sent. That's far from Snapchat's default efemerality, where visible messages disappear once you close the chat window unless you purposely touch to save them.
Instagram has reached a decent compromise. You can send both permanent and temporary photos and videos. Text messages are permanent by default, but you can override even old ones. The result is the flexibility to chat through expired photos as well as to receive informal messages knowing that they will disappear or disappear, while it is also possible to have reliable and utilitarian chats and share photos privately for posterity without fear. that a single touch is deleted. they. When Instagram Direct added ephemeral messages, it experienced an accelerated growth in more than 375 million monthly users as of April 2017.
Snapchat lost daily active users in the last two quarters
WhatsApp should be able to build this quite easily. Add a timer option when people send media so that photos or videos can disappear after 10 seconds, a minute, an hour or a day. Allow people to add a timer similar to the specific messages they send, or set a default value for each conversation in the chat for how long their messages last, similar to the Signal encrypted messaging application
. Chats with close friends as the key piece of your application that was hampered by this year's disastrous redesign. He constantly refers to Snapchat as the fastest way to communicate. That may be true for the images, but not necessarily for the text, as BTIG's Rich Greenfield points out, citing how overdue text can break conversations. It is likely that Snapchat will be duplicated in the messaging now that Stories has been copied to death.
Given their interest in incorporating older users, this may mean making texts easier to maintain permanent or at least prolonging time. They last before disappearing And with the next reengineering of the Snapchat application Mushroom Project to work better in developing markets, Snap will increasingly try to become WhatsApp.
… Unless WhatsApp can become Snapchat first. Spiegel showed that people want the flexibility of temporary messages. Who cares who invented something if you can take more people to deliver more joy? WhatsApp should swallow their pride and embrace the ephemeral.