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In any other messaging app, you'd think it was a bug in the software. Moments after you send or receive a photograph or video clip on Snapchat, it disappears – permanently. Yet this simple twist on picture-messaging has made Snapchat a phenomenon.
Just over two years ago, Evan Spiegel was presenting the idea of a self-destructing message service to his classmates at Stanford University. They hated it, but in September 2011 he dropped out to launch it as an iPhone app with a fellow student, Bobby Murphy. Now more than 200m snaps are being sent every day around the world, compared with 40m on Instagram. In February, Snapchat raised a chunk of investment that valued the company at around $60m. Now, it has raised a chunk more, valuing it at $800m. Most flattering, the service has been ripped off – but not replaced – by Facebook.
Why would so many people, mostly teenagers, want to be able to send one another photos and videos that nobody else will ever see? I think you know why. The exchange of sexually explicit messages has been popular for as long as it's been possible, but sadly so has humiliating people later with the evidence. Snapchat at last provides sexting with a prophylactic.
The company denies this. "I'm not convinced that the whole sexting thing is as big as the media makes it out to be," Spiegel has said. "I just don't know people who do that." He may be right. It is the nature of the app that no one knows how it is generally being used.
Although of course Snapchat's guarantee of privacy isn't quite a guarantee. The recipient can photograph the screen with a different camera – or use the smartphone itself to take a screenshot, but then the sender is told they have done so. And if you're determined enough, old images can often be recovered anyway. This may support Spiegel's point, in fact. If teenagers know about this, which they surely do, would millions of them really be using Snapchat for sex? Perhaps most of it is merely embarrassing, rather than explicit.
The app's true appeal may be something more fundamental. Smartphone and social media users know the addictive buzz of a fresh message. Making it ephemeral and secretive intensifies the buzz. Dennis Phelps of IVP, one of Snapchat's new investors, said: "The temporary nature of the photo or video often creates a sense of excitement and an urgency of consumption that is rare in this era of information overload." After the mild era of texts and 'Likes', perhaps Snapchat is the hard stuff.
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