Is Snapchat the Next Social Media Platform?

When you think about social media nowadays, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram probably come to mind first and foremost. And you wouldn't be wrong, these 3 giants have dominated the world of social media for the last few years. But, as technology and trends evolve, we must consider new and different forms of reaching our publics.

For the last year and a half, a picture messaging app called Snapchat has taken college-age students and younger by storm, becoming one of the most popular apps in mere months. Snapchat allows you to send a picture and just a few words to your friends, for a maximum of 10 seconds before it disappears. You can also do the same with videos; and recently Snapchat introduced 'Stories', their version of a news feed. Stories allows a user to post a picture, video, or series of both for all their friends to view for 24 hours. It's this news feed-esque function that makes Snapchat viable as a social media platform.

Yesterday, during the World Cup final between Argentina and Germany, and in the hours leading up to it, Snapchat surprised everyone by adding a story called Rio Live to every user's story page. This Rio Live story was constantly updated throughout the day by the company, using curated user's images and videos from Brazil regarding the game. By watching this constantly updated story, people half the world away, like myself, were able to watch the game from the front row, or even from some of the players' perspectives. Watching the end of the game from so many unique perspectives was so much better than just watching it on TV, and this capability shows how Snapchat stories can be used.

Snapchat stories, and even just sending out mass snapchats to people, are a sure way to get recognized. Even receiving a snapchat from someone you don't know, most people are going to open it, simply because they believe it will be gone after a few seconds. This can become a great way to tell college age demographics about products, services, or a way for trends to get started. Snapchat used to just consist of a picture and some words, but now the trend is towards Instagram-style pictures, with filters, emoticons, drawings, and different fonts. Snapchats are becoming more complex, people have even made movies out of them, showing the potential for even more uses.

This is the Snapchat logo, named Ghostface Chillah. 

What are your thoughts about Snapchat or other emerging social media platforms?

The Most Social Sporting Event

Today kicks off the 2014 FIFA World Cup, which unites 31 countries every four years for a month long soccer tournament (or football, I should say). It is the most watched sporting event in the world, with FIFA estimating nearly one billion viewers for the 2010 World Cup final. That’s a lot of eyes.

But this year, much of that attention will not just be on the television screen but the computer screen as well. It is predicted that this year’s World Cup will exceed both the Olympic Games and Super Bowl in social media mentions, making it the most social sporting event to date. Just within the last 30 days #WorldCup was tweeted roughly 1,400,400 times, which is sure to increase just by the time you’re done reading this post.

It’s no wonder Twitter and Facebook are having a competition of their own to be the go-to platform for discussing, lamenting, and celebrating the events of the World Cup. Earlier this week, Facebook launched a Trending World Cup page which presents users with news, scores, and highlights in real time so fans don’t ever miss a thing. Twitter has also created a similar Match timeline and World Cup timeline so users can stay updated with matches and scores. In addition, they have brought back the hashflag, first introduced for the 2010 World Cup. It’s quite literally a hashtag flag- a country code along with a flag emoticon.

As if that weren’t enough, Twitter is also hosting the World Cup of Tweets.  Fans can vote for their country on an interactive Twitter page which generates an automatic tweet with their team’s Twitter handle and hashtags. The country whose hashflag is mentioned the most will be deemed the winner and announced during the first game of the tournament.

If you plan on posting about the matches, use the official hashtags #WorldCup, #Brazil2014, and of course #USA. Be sure to tune in when the US plays Ghana on June 16!