MEDIA ANALYSIS: SNAPCHAT

Introduction

“Kelly, you’re famous!” My roommate shrieked down the long, dorm-style hallway of our apartment. Annoyed by the interruption from my studies and still bitter about the day’s game, I mumbled something in response. Had my witty comment on John Krasinski’s Instagram been replied to by the hunk himself? Did Jimmy Kimmel finally use one of my clever tweets in his “Celebrities Read Mean Tweets” segment? “You made the ‘Michigan vs. Michigan State’ Snap Story!” she yelled, jumping onto my bed. She held her phone out in front of me and clicked on the “Live” Snap Story by that name. Tapping the screen, images and videos of that day’s events flashed before me. My heart stopped when I saw a familiar face fill up the screen amongst thousands behind me in the student section of The Big House. In the video, I exhale, look directly into the camera and make a sound that can only be described as a squawk. The camera flashes to the field, and just as soon as I arrived on the screen, I have disappeared.  “Melissa said it already has 1.2 million views, and over 60 screenshots,” my roommate exclaimed. 

The rest of the night, I received at least a dozen texts messages with images of my face attached from friends and family. Individuals from Massachusetts, California - even friends of friends that I had never formally met recognized me on this national Snapchat Story.  While allowing myself to be swept away in the excitement of it all, I began to consider the implications of having my face viewed by millions of people. When my friend started the recording, I knew it would be seen by her friends, but I certainly was not anticipating the size of audience that I was met with upon her submitting the Snap to the Michigan vs. MSU Snap Story. I started to wonder: who really owns that Snapchat? After getting so many views on a different platform, can it still be considered my friend’s video? Snapchat’s control over a user’s images affects the relationship between creator and viewer, as Snapchat Stories entice the application’s users to give up ownership of their videos in exchange for a larger audience and greater popularity, in turn allowing for Snapchat itself to gain recognition.

Background/Literature Review

Specifically, my argument targets the concept of Snapchat Stories, and namely those controlled not by individual users but those “Live” Stories monitored by Snapchat employees from across the country. An article by Josh Constine written in Tech Crunch magazine investigates the concept of “Live” Stories and how they first came about at the 2014 Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas, Nevada (Constine, 2014). According to the article, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel wanted to create a way to unify all of the attendees in one specific location, and given the young demographic of electronic dance music festivals, this was a great setting to try out the new idea. Users were thrilled to see their content being shared and seen by so many people. This article specifies the origin of “Live” Stories and how they were successful beginning with the first attempt. The article continues to highlight how, since then, such Stories have evolved and become much more widely viewable and arguably more interesting to watch with the introduction of geotags and geofilters. Because this article was written in 2014, it provides a unique perspective on the origin of the object I am investigating, as the application and its use has changed drastically in only a year’s time, but was successful from the start.

In a piece written by Victor Luckerson for TIME Magazine, the details of how Snapchat “Live” Stories are formed are discussed. “Live” Stories are created when users submit their content to be considered for a given feed, and these submissions are monitored and ultimately, the media is chosen by curators in New York and Los Angeles that sift through thousands and thousands of submissions per day. This piece looks into specifically what media is chosen for the Stories, and also sheds light on just how many people are seeing each Snapchat in such Stories. The numbers can be in the millions depending on what Story it is (Luckerson, 2015). Similarly, Carmel DeAmicis writes about a similar topic in Gigaom, where he again investigates viewership numbers on Snapchat and also compares Snapchat views with television show views. DeAmicis utilizes Nielsen ratings, a system in which the Nielsen Company quantifies the shows and channels being watched by specific families throughout various countries. They do this by using meters on family televisions that represent of a cross-section of representative homes throughout the country.  Directly compared to Nielsen ratings, which admittedly are not always completely accurate, DeAmicis was able to discern that Snapchat “Live” Stories are pretty similar to television shows in terms of simply the numbers they are able to reach (DeAmicis, 2015).

Furthermore, Snapchat is extremely focused on hitting their target demographic: young adults and teenagers. As discussed by Giddings, Lister, Grant, Dovey, and Kelly, simultaneously, media producers must understand that they cannot ultimately control the way the users are going to use their product (Giddings, Lister, 2009). When the product is in the market, while one can analyze how they may think an application will be used, we cannot know for sure and it is often difficult to account for this. Along with this, an article in Sporting News by Preston McClellan takes an in-depth look at Snapchat “Live” Stories in relation to sporting events, detailing how such Stories make fans feel connected and united leading up to and during a game. McClellan states that these Stories have allowed Snapchat users to form a community around the application based on a common interest. He also reports that people are more likely to trust content that is user-generated (McClellan, 2014). The article argues that this is true about Snapchat, which means there is less of a bias and opens many doors for the company to make a profit off of content willingly submitted to the platform. This creates a community amongst Snapchat’s users that would not exist if it were not for the media first belonging to individual users, and then being controlled in a larger way. 

Finally, due to the affordances of Snapchat’s “Live” Stories, advertisers are increasingly interested in promoting their products within the social media application. In an article written on Recode by Kurt Wagner, Snapchat’s plan to increase advertising is detailed. The piece examines Snapchat’s regular viewership and how each “Live” Story is given four advertising slots, with the first slot being the most expensive as it will get the most views within the chronological Story (Wagner). The Story also goes on to detail the expenses of a Snapchat “Live” Story advertisement, and why companies are interested in this feature. This particular aspect of Snapchat focuses on how the company can take these “Live” Stories and while creating a community, also be gaining a profit.

Method/Data

I conducted a close reading of Snapchat’s Story and “Live” Story functions, resulting in a thorough characterization of Snapchat Stories’ characteristics, qualities, and practices. Snapchat is a social media application that can be downloaded for free on any smart phone device. Users set up an account by creating a username and adding their friends either using their username or phone number, as the application is inherently attached to the user’s smartphone. Once connected with friends, an individual can begin interacting by sending their friends photos or videos. The unique aspect of Snapchat as a platform is the concept of photos and videos only lasting a certain amount of time - between one and ten seconds. Once the snapchat has been played, aside from one ‘replay’ in which a user can freely revisit one snapchat every twenty four hours, that snapchat vanishes forever. Apart from simply sending photos, you can also engage in text-only chatting that only lasts until the conversation has been physically exited by the user. Upon returning to the chat, the text will have disappeared.

The content on Snapchat includes this text chatting, photos, and videos. These illustrations can include various features, such as captions which aid in setting and developing a scene or sending a message to someone. Captions are limited to one line, however, which is an aspect of Snapchat that may restrict the messages one can convey via the application. The photos and videos can also be altered by using filters. The interface offers three main filters which alter the coloring of the media, and only one filter can be applied at a time. Along with the more cosmetic way of filtering, alternative filters place a clock in the middle of the screen, show the temperature at the Snapchatter’s given location, and indicate how fast the user is moving in MPH or KM/HR. Yet another feature is the geofilter, which utilizes the location of the user and then presents the option of a location-based graphic. Adding a geofilter is an interesting way of telling your friends within the application where you are without having to explicitly say it. Some locations have many different geofilter options, allowing for variation even if the user is repeatedly Snapchatting from the same location. Each of these filters presents a unique feature to each person’s Snapchat, allowing some creative freedom in the communication process.

Contextually, Snapchat caters to a relatively young demographic. According to Business Insider, the largest age group of Snapchat users is between 18-24, making up 45% of their user age demographic (Hoelzel, 2015). The next 26% of their users are between the ages of 25-34, meaning more than 70% of their users are 35 and under. Compared to other social media applications where the users are more equally spread, such as Facebook where each age bracket contains between 16-22% of the users on the site (Hoelzel, 2015), Snapchat’s users are primarily on the younger side of the spectrum. For this reason, so many of Snapchats features are designed to be more appealing for someone of this generation. For example, while a Snapchat user may be connected with hundreds of people on the application, there is a way to measure which of these friends you engage in conversation with the most - who your “best friends” are. The application applies emojis next to certain friends’ names depending on aspects of a given relationship: if you and a friend communicate for many days in a row, the fire emoji appears beside the number of days you have been Snapchatting. Each of your “best friends” - or those you interact with the most - have a smiley face next to their name. If they are your number one best friend and you are also their number one best friend, a yellow heart emoji will appear. If you are one of their best friends but they are not one of yours, they have a sly smirking face beside their username. If the opposite is true, a grimacing face appears, and the list goes on. This system of ranking friendships and connections is something that younger generations would simply value and understand more than older individuals would.

Specifically, Snapchat Stories produced by both users and those organized by specific events provide a platform for users to share their experiences in a more communal way. Snapchat Stories are collections of photos and videos that, instead of being sent directly to another user, are translated to a medium that allows any of the user’s friends to view the content. There is a separate tab on Snapchat entitled “Stories” where the media appears. The Stories last for twenty-four hours and can be replayed by any of the user’s friends as many times as they desire. The same filters, captions, and geofilters apply in this aspect of Snapchat. The person who’s Story it is can see who has watched each part of their Story, as well as how many people have screenshotted (capturing an image of the smart phone’s display) a given image.

Apart from individual Snapchat Stories, there are also Stories listed under “Discover” and “Live” that are either maintained by corporations or managed by location. ESPN, Cosmopolitan, and People, for example, are three companies that utilize this application daily to reach their audience. Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel wanted to create a way to unify all of the attendees in one specific location, first at the Electronic Daisy Carnival in 2014, and given the young demographic of dance festivals, this was a great setting to try out the new idea. According to Josh Constine on Tech Crunch, who was also at the event and was able to watch this feature of Snapchat unfold, users were thrilled to see their content being shared and seen by so many people: “Snapchat edited out any spam of objectionable content, but also boring and low-quality snaps. […] It also managed to avoid overly sexist content […] [and] authentically portrayed the event” (Constine, 2014). Similarly, the University of Michigan is among many college campuses that has a “My Campus Story” where students submit their Snaps in the hopes of being selected for the Campus Story. Upon taking a Snap, one can hope to be featured on the Campus Story by sending it to “My Campus Story” instead of or in addition to sending the Snap to their own Story or to a friend. Following, whomever is maintaining that particular Story decides the content they wish to publish, and those Snaps become public to anyone capable of viewing the Story. This is similar to the “Michigan vs. MSU” Snap Story, although this particular Story was based on an event and not a location. Each of the features discussed in this section aid in promoting Snapchat’s inherent ability to make individual’s surrender ownership of their media in exchange for popularity and a larger audience.

Interpretation/Analysis

The creation of shared “Live” Stories has altered the way the young users of Snapchat view and are willing to share their content. Snapchat showing content creators how many views and screenshots their media received plays into a user’s feeling of popularity because it directly measures how many people care about what they are posting enough to save it. Screenshotting in of itself makes a large difference in how Snapchat’s content is shared, as these images are meant to only last for a particular period of time and a smart phone’s ability to screenshot compromises this affordance. Make a Story too long and your viewers will lose interest, too short and no one knows what’s going on. Make it clever, and you can keep interest for as long as you desire. Submitting content to a Story, in turn, increases their number of views and therefore enhances a feeling of popularity. Upon taking a Snap, one can hope to be featured on such a Story by sending it to “My Campus Story” or a different platform with the same idea instead of or in addition to sending the Snap to their own Story or to a friend.

This feature, the Snapchat “Live” Story, has turned Snapchat into a broadcast platform of sorts. Instead of being powered by famous entertainers, Live Stories are “a kind of real-time, crowdsourced documentary made up on the fly by the app’s 100 million daily users” according to Luckerson’s article in TIME Magazine (Luckerson, 2014). When a user allows their Snapchat to be posted by an outside party, it becomes part of that Story and essentially no longer belongs to that person. When I am watching the University of Michigan Campus Story, for example, I am not interested in who originally posted the Snap, I only care about the effect the Snap has on the overall Story I am viewing. That being said, the original poster may cling to the fact that it used to be their content, telling all of their friends that it was theirs. While that may impress the individual’s friends, the thousands of other viewers that do not know where the Snap came from are not interested in knowing its origin. I will admit to feeling relatively popular after the Snapchat of me was posted, and my friend Melissa who posted it feels similarly as she can see that more than 1.5 million people saw her Snapchat. For anyone who did not know myself of Melissa personally, it was just another Snap among the hundred second Story from game day.

This switch in ownership of a Snapchat from personal use to being seen by millions of people is an interesting feature of the social media application. According to Luckerson, landing a snap on a Live Story is extremely competitive. So who exactly is deciding what content is being shared on the platform? A team of curators based in New York and Los Angeles sort through thousands of submissions for each Story, choosing a select group to include, according to Ben Schwerin, Snapchat’s director of partnerships for Live Stories (Luckerson, 2015). Snapchat curators look for Snaps that are unique and have their own perspective on that event. Since users make the choice whether they wish to submit their content to the “Live” Story option when they agree to sending the Snap, they are handing over the ownership of their Snapchat. Users seem more than willing to do so, as an article in Gigaom reports, seeing as their content may get millions of views: “It appears Snapchat’s Our Stories are hitting viewing numbers that television’s most popular shows see, although it’s tough to get a clear picture of Snapchat’s  metrics” (DeAmicis, 2015). One Snapchat user, for example, submitted his content to New York’s Snowmageddon “Our Story,” and the app showed that it had been viewed 25 million times and had been screenshotted more than five thousand times. To put this in context, the 2014 Oscars averaged 36.6 million viewers in the United States according  to Nielsen ratings (DeAmicis, 2015). These Stories are reaching extremely large audiences, and given the number of submissions the curators must sort through, it is no wonder Snapchat’s frequent users are willing to hand over ownership of their Stories in exchange for views.

Discussion

Snapchat Stories present a prime example of user-generated content and interactivity. According to Giddings, Lister, Grant, Dovey, and Kelly, producers of media content need to ‘configure’ the user: “[Producers need] to have some idea of the kinds of behaviors that they want their environment to afford, whilst simultaneously understanding that they can neither wholly predict nor control what users will do within it” (Giddings, Lister, 2009). While this is mostly true for Snapchat employees and users, Snapchat Story curators ultimately have the final say in the content that is presented in each of the Stories. Regardless, the crowdsourcing that Stories permit creates a community feeling amongst its users, according to Sporting News reporter Preston McClellan: “Inherently, people trust user generated content more than content originating from the brand. People perceive less of a bias or internal message” (McClellan, 2014). This could present endless possibilities for companies to advertise and promote their brands while allowing for fans and users to be excited to share and see their content on such a widely-viewed platform. Sports teams have already begun to see the value in such promotion, among other companies and corporations.

This, in turn, gives Snapchat the possibility to do other things with their content, such as sell space to advertisers for a greater profit. Snapchat has already begun doing so, selling advertising blocks within “Live” Stories for quite a significant profit. As noted by Wagner in Recode, sources familiar with Snapchat’s business say the company charges “around two cents per view on a 10-second ad inserted alongside user submitted content” (Wagner, 2015). Wagner reports that the average audience for a “Live” Story is around 20 million people in a 24-hour window, making these advertisements fairly expensive. Due to Snapchat’s appeal in using user-generated content, they are able to draw larger audiences and in doing so, attract the attention of businesses who wish to place ads on the platform. With all of this in mind, my original thought that Snapchat’s features set users up to willingly submit and lose ownership of their content in exchange for a greater number of views remains true, and in doing so, implements a monetary gain for Snapchats.

Conclusion

Snapchat’s regulation of a user’s content affects the relationship between creator and viewer, as the appeal of “Live” Stories persuade users to release ownership of their media in exchange for a larger audience and in hopes of increased popularity, therefore allowing for Snapchat itself to gain recognition. Snapchat offers many affordances that other applications do not, such as its inherent property of communicating where text is not at the forefront. The Snapchat “Live” Stories based on locations and events are where using Snapchat becomes more interesting, especially for the target audience Snapchat hopes to reach. Despite taking ownership of users’ content and passing them off as their own, Snapchat users are more than willing to send in their media in the hopes of reaching a greater audience regardless of whether viewers know it is their Snap or not. Snapchat Stories are about views and popularity, and the line between creator and owner becomes less clear as Stories continue to develop and change the way we use the application.

Works Cited

Constine, J. (2014, June 21). Snapchat’s “Our Story” Is A Genius, Collaborative  

     Reinvention Of The Livestream. Retrieved November 4, 2015.

DeAmicis, C. (2015, February 24). Snapchat’s “Our Stories” are generating tens of        

     millions of views. Retrieved November 4, 2015.

Hoelzel, M. (2015, June 29). UPDATE: A breakdown of the demographics for each of

     the different social networks. Retrieved from

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     each-of-the-different-social-networks-2015-6

Lister, M. (2009). New media: a critical introduction. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.

Luckerson, V. (2015, September 25). How Snapchat Built its Most Addictive Feature.    

     Retrieved November 4, 2015.

McClellan, P. (2014, October 1). Snapchat's 'our Story' takes crowdsourcing to a new

     level. 

Retrieved November 4, 2015.

Wagner, K. (2015, June 17). Snapchat Is Making Some Pretty Serious Money From Live

     Stories. Retrieved November 22, 2015, from http://recode.net/2015/06/17/snapchats-

     making- some-pretty-serious-money-from-live-Stories/