#like just looking at them makes me angry BUT mostly apple products i think android ones are less hives inducing

[derpinette]

i hated airpods & phones with those big fugly cameras in the back when they were announced as a concept & i hate them even more each time i see that hideousness in person

[regentcorpse]

Added after I wrote this, I know my grammar is a mess in this. This post is 2223 words, longer than most high school essays which averaged 1500 words. If you don’t want to read all of this it has been separated into paragraphs and most of the conversation points are in the last three paragraphs. This sentence was added in after word count, the original post was on Facebook which is why the link in this does point to my own blog: My sentence structures are not correct, and this is Facebook and I don’t give a crap about that here. I did try to do my best to make it somewhat understandable with several ideas and conversations all in this. Also I didn’t originally separate it into paragraphs. If a sentence seems out of place at the start or end of a paragraph, my bad. But please read, comment opinions, not angry but constructive to build a conversation. I also don’t know how but this became more like an info blog post, but valid points and openings for conversations are made.

These newish Apple features like the Memoji, like it’s aight but still lacking in so many hair styles and facial depth, forehead, chins, and noses. Hopefully the will add a lot more features to be able to make it more like you, in a cartoon version. I’m about to check out the full bitmoji app to see what all they have, but I feel like apple should of used bitmoji, and since Apple has a version, I know android does. How is their version in your experience? (Please reply even if you don’t know me, I want to have decent conversations with people, but I hardly have anyone to talk to about random stuff like this.) Also the fact that Apple has Memoji in their database of words and not Bitmoji, is extremely weird, and pointless not to have it.

I don’t know how I feel overall about Apples decisions on these updates. They seem to be trying to almost build a legit social media around their platforms, I wouldn’t be surprised if they make something like Google+, which will most likely fail all together as a product, not because it will be awful but because we already have the social media giants that control most people’s lives, work, and reputation.

Facebook is for memes mostly and socializing with like minded people with their pages and groups. Not to mention that so many people use their marketplace now as well, which did shock me that it took of with other apps offering the same thing before Facebook did. To those who didn’t know, yes, Facebook stole that idea from OfferUp and LetGo(I think there was another around before the marketplace.)

You have Snapchat, the goofy fun social media where you can have personalized stories, private or public, and I may be wrong but they are also the ones that introduced the idea(maybe didn’t originally have the idea, but did introduce it, I think. Let me know if I am wrong please, I would like to know.) Next, the thing that made Snapchat big originally was the disappearing pictures after 10 seconds, which you couldn’t edit when the app first came out, the initial release didn’t even have filters or all the extra stuff they have now, it was so basic and simple and blew up. Another thing that made Snapchat big in the same way, disappearing photos meant disappearing nudes for both male and female, only that at first they could be screenshots, that didn’t notify you. In a future version, they disabled screenshoting photos from the default system buttons, but of course people found ways and made apps to get around it. Snapchat then started to block accounts for using those apps, then came the solution of notifying users of screenshots and then recordings when Apple released that feature. I know Snapchat probably wasn’t the first to make the goofy photo filters, but they did make it so much easier and almost more advanced with their simple facial mapping(yes it is simple since it’s meant to work with phones without facial recognition and all the other fancy face features.). Now Snapchat is a place to socialize in groups, or privately with friends through photos, messages, and video. Another big use now is the porn industry, where I think it’s safe to say only females succeed at making a lot of money with. It also seems to avoid spam bots and stuff. I’ve never received anything from a fake user or bot, besides their built in Snapchat bot, so that is honestly impressive and I applaud them for trying to keep it safe and friendly, except for the usual douchebag guys that send dick picks and stalk girls no matter their age. Danger lurks at all corners of the internet, and making friends is easier now, and just an add and a message away sometimes. But be careful who you add and honestly block anyone who harasses you or sends you unwanted images. And report them, help improve internet society and safety. This goes for all social media platforms.

Instagram is built solely around the personal sharing of photos to a feed and nothing else really. I know everyone was shocked that it became as big as it did, considering you can do the same thing in Facebook, and easily share other peoples photos to your friends. Although it is just photos, the people on there that are successful, actually do influence people and promote sponsors and their products. Some use it to get money, for their more explicit content. It followed Snapchat in adding stories, then filters, and has been successful in its endeavors. You can find everything legal on their as well as some illegal content such as drug use. As mentioned above, yes bots and fake accounts exist, be weary in who you talk to and exchange messages and photos with on here as well.

Twitter has been around for a long time and honestly, I see it being the first to die, due to overall lack of community and now with all the user interface updates and whatnot, it can be difficult to understand how the social environment of it works. Basically you get I think 140 characters to insert into the status prompt or whatever you/they want to call it. I personally don’t use it much, I get on there to see any updates from game companies and some of my favorite authors and music artists. I do this maybe once a week or two. I honestly don’t understand the point in twitter nor how getting followers and conversations started on there, if you have any suggestions for me please let me know if you are still somehow reading this.

Tumblr, ye olde blogging platform, one of the best until the pornography bam that yahoo added once their app was removed from the Apple store after I think being reported for child pornography. A lot of people lost their blogs and thousands of followers and countless hours of work. Many others had a lot of their content censored by a community guidelines photo or by being completely removed. So yes we can all agree that it’s a good thing they are trying to do what they can to combat child pornography of Tumblr, but a lot of people saw this as a complete change of environment for tumblr, whether being used for art, music, porn, pizza, cats etc.. Another big complaint that caused this change is how easy it was to lie about your age and turn off the content filter that got rid of the majority of inappropriate content. It was literally just a search option, then they tried moving it to your phone settings to the app setting in there to turn it off, which was still too easy. I can say you will still see pornographic content on Tumblr, mostly by accident, but there are people still posting getting around their image search algorithms. Past that to summarize, it’s basically a bigger version of Twitter, allowing for blog posts of most media types now, they have a reblog button to repost on your own page(these also get their own sub domains where it follows such as mine regentcorpse.tumblr.com. This is not for promotion, just an easy example(it’s a new blog with only like one blog post, but yes is my personal blog.) You can use your own domain if you own the address and route it to tumblrs name-servers, which most domain hosts have guides available to help you understand the process and set it up. They follow Wordpress in allowing themes which are only visible in a web browser and not the Tumblr mobile app, but on mobile you can edit the color scheme and fonts to what they have stock. To be like twitter with the features of Wordpress except custom plugins, it is a phenomenal platform still where you can truly be yourself and no one actually has to know who you are, you just post the content you love, the content you create(except for the porn content that a lot of people now went to Snapchat and Twitter for, and probably some private instagrams). You can find almost everything you heart desires within lawful reasons, I mean honestly you could probably find someone to buy illegal stuff from like guns, drugs, etc but I’ve never looked for that type of stuff on there. I love cyberpunk culture and there are so much content around it on tumblr. It also has pretty decent privacy setting for a blog, which can be password locked I believe and you can set permissions for it to be only people you follow or follow you, or no one or everyone can message you, ask questions(which can be anonymous), and submit content to your blog(also can be anonymous). The tumblr community can be toxic but also so helpful and beautiful seeing some of the ways people come together on there. It can range from legit bugs to books and quotes to programming and even professional use.

There is also LinkedIn, which is a very professional platform where you can add your professional resume and skills and may get recruited to jobs. I remember something like this tried to launch on Facebook but I do believe it failed out, as I haven’t seen anything about it or a link since they probably removed it.

So this leads me to ask What would an Apple Social Media Platform consist of? How would they try to outdo the others, and how would they make it appealing enough for people to use/switch to. Yes Apple is a big name, but so was google which failed at social media. They had good ideas but went about it completely wrong.

I feel like Apple would attempt to make a platform around creativity and art of all types. I feel like it would be a platform that would combine GarageBand, IMessages, Memoji, and all their other great apps into one. If they added collaboration on projects a lot easier in that aspect, and didn’t force themselves into everyone(Yes, Google that’s a shot at you.), they could make a truly great platform where we could see great things made by groups, communities, artists, and I could see them adding some sort of collaboration for web developers and programmers, which I would like to see knowing that Facebook, the corporation not social network, owns Oculus, and they already have a lot of resources for developers. Do you think Apple might be working on a social media platform, or do you think they will just keep adding out of place features? Do you think they would succeed in it or absolutely fail? Do you think Apple would stand a chance against the other giants that have been around and built up their user base? Also another issue is how exclusive Apple is with everything, just the fact you can log into Apple TV and watch it on a Windows Pc is a miracle. Do you think Apple will make it exclusive or would they put in the effort of being their media platform to everyone no matter their device? Remember everyone had a MySpace, now you never even hear about it, Facebook was a surprising switch with it having limited functionality and basically no customization options for your profile like MySpace and some other media’s had.

I want to hear your thoughts, opinions, and speculations about this, let’s start an open and friendly conversation, no hate or trolls, I don’t want all of that and your comments will be deleted and I may even block you from seeing posts like this on your feed and my page. This is at an end because my thumbs are tired and my phones dying and Facebook is lagging from how much I just put on here, but seriously comment, let me know what’s running in your mind, even what you would like to see change in social media in general or even in specific ones. I hope you all do open a nice and positive and informative conversation, I want to see that on Facebook more and I want to make friends I can talk about this type of stuff with in depth or even as broad as mostly common knowledge.

[viralhottopics]

In defense of Snapchat, a manifesto

Image: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

YeahI’m a business and tech reporter, who reports on social media networks. And in order to do the job correctly, it’s on me to maintain a degree of objective remove. That said: I’m not a reporting robot without ideas, preferences, or a life beyond my gig. And while part of that job also involves spending time on social networks, like all of you, (A) I still do it for fun, and (B) If you looked at my phone, it’d be pretty obvious what my favorite social networks are, and how I spend my time using them.

SEE ALSO: Here’s why all the sudden the banks love Snapchat but still hate Twitter

Here’s a good snapshot:

Which brings us to Facebook, down there, towards the bottom of my usage. They just unleashed their latest attempt to squash Snapchat on Tuesday with Facebook Storiesthe experience of Snapchat Stories, now available on your Facebook News Feed, something nearly 2 billion people could have access to, if you let them. There’s more about that here.

It’s nothing new. Snapchat’s faced down a full-on assault for your attention from Facebook-owned properties, in the forms of Instagram Stories, Messenger Day and WhatsApp Stories, each trying to replicate the very things that make Snapchat, well, Snapchat, but under a different, Facebook-owned app.

Instagram Stories is, thus far, the big winner, with everyone from the network’s most influential creators to its most typical users embracing the feature. Instagram Stories went from 0 to 150 million monthly active users in six months. My colleague, Mashable deputy tech editor Damon Beres, is one of those culprits, and openly admits it (“My #thirst has driven me to abandon Snapchat for Instagram Stories“).

Damon found that “Instagram’s rate of coolness per capita is higher than Snapchat’s. There’s just a bigger audience of interesting people to communicate with on Instagram.”

‘Kay, fine. Fair. But let’s be totally clear: Damon’s saying that he’s Team Instagram because his account is getting what he feels are more highly-valued views.

Thing is, I’m Team Snapchat for the exact same reason.

“Snapchat,” continued Damon, “will likely remain my favorite app for sending incredibly weird things to a handful of close friendsits selection of stickers, face-transforming filters, geolocation tags and so forth.”

And that’s exactly my point, and why Snapchat’s the more valuable of the two appsbecause the mouthbreathing annony-succubi followers of Instagram (especially Damon’s, lol) might be more proliferate, and might be more influential, but I still don’t really know nor care who the fuck any of ’em are.

Snapchat’s where my friends areyes, my real friends. On Facebook and Instagram, I’ll add you as a friend, and you can feel free to stalk my high school photos. I don’t really care. But when it comes to my life, in real-time, in the momentwhat I do every day before work, or after work? That’s on Snapchat.

But when it comes to my life, in real-time, in the moment, when it comes to what I do every day before work, or after work? That’s on Snapchat.

And I’m not inviting you in, unless you gain my trust. It’s kind of like building sources as a journalist: I’m giving you access to my personal life. And yeah, you could take a screenshot of my Snapchat, and share it to the world. And while I’ll know that you did it, it’d be too late to take it back. So as far as my Snapchat’s concerned, you need to be vetted before I let you in.

That’s not to say I’m doing anything too racy and posting it to my Snapchat Story. In fact, that’s another reason why I love the app. For the people that do enjoy seeing it, who I very much trust with my private life, I can send them personal messages. They disappear. And that’s great. They don’t have it saved on their phone because they honestly don’t need it there.

And neither do I.

Shocker: I sext. I’ve sent my fair share of nudes to boyfriends and to others. I’m not ashamed. And if you’re wondering why I don’t just text them, it’s because Snapchat just makes it way more comfortable for us all. Like I said: I don’t need these on my phone, and neither do they. And if they doit happensthey can screenshot. All the more flattery, to be honest.

To be sure, I was once a Snapchat hater, too. One of my best friends tried to convince me to download it in 2012, while I was a sophomore in college. I told her I was too busy with school. Still, I downloaded the app four months later, and I don’t regret it.

To be sure, I was a Snapchat hater too once upon a time.

And while I report on Snapchatas well as other tech companiesfor a living, it’s not reporting on Snapchat that makes me love Snapchat.

What I love about Snapchat is the joy it provides me. I go to Facebook if I want to stalk my ex or a high school classmate. It not funthere’s no real joy in itbut it’s cursory, I do it anyway. I go to Snapchat when I want to genuinely see what my friends are doing. Sure, it creates FOMO; but it’s also an opportunity for me to easily reach out or reply with a funny face or sticker or Bitmoji. It’s a different language, for me and my friends. Not the randos in my life.

And I love Snapchat for the news and the stories it shares. Beyond watching whatever my Snapchat friends are doing, the app (usually) presents me with daily, well-packaged content from media brands, like, say, Mashable’s (Disclosure: Mashable is a Snapchat Discover partner) are enjoyable reads, or tap-throughs.

On Facebook, most of the time, news articles come with obnoxious commentary from friends. My brother-in-law leaves an angry reaction on everything I post (okay, I know, it’s a joke). But: It’s just not fun. If I want to read news through a filtered bubble, I’ll go to my Twitter.

Snapchat’s breaking news coverage is also an incredible product in and of itself. Props to Peter Hamby, Snap’s head of news, for making sure they curate stories with smart news judgment (*cough* Facebook Trending Topics disaster *cough*). It’s pretty inarguable: Snapchat’s got some of the best news coverage on social media.

And the lenses. I know Facebook copied your lenses, Snapchat. But damn, your puppy filter will always bring me joyno matter if Facebook completely mimics it. I’ll never forget the many times I’ve played around with filters with my exes, my best friends, and my mom.

Lenses are fairly new on Snapchat, as in the last two years, but they embody the Snapchat aestheticone they’ve been developing for the last five years.

I’m a confessed, admitted Snapchat fangirlnot unlike those “Apple fanboys” you might be familiar with. Shamelessness goes both ways, guys.

I remember when Snapchat first began selling merchandise branded with Ghostface Chillah (that ghost logo of theirs, who I love, and who you secretly love, too). I immediately requested for everyone to buy me everything. Now, I’m the proud owner of an Official Snapchat Ice Tray. It makes Ghostface Chillah-shaped ice. Which, of course, eventually melts away. Perfect.

Of course I own Spectacles. I carry them in my bag with me everyday. I don’t wear them oftenmostly because I’ve got pretty bad eyesight, and I haven’t gotten prescription lenses because I just don’t want to be separated from my Spectacles for too long.

But I love them. I love wearing them to partiesI Snapped moments of my friend’s wedding. I wore them around Universal Studios. They’re absurd, sure. But they’re also a uniquely fun way to show the world what you’re living through, the moment you’re living through it.

And I absolutely loved their release. Snapbots: Those minion-looking vending machines, dropped in arbitrary locations around the country? They’re fun, dorky, ridiculous, and unique to Snapchat’s strange aesthetic. Instagram and Facebook have rarely had a tangible, real-world presence. Snapchat wants to make itself real in the world off of our phones.

As of this week, there are Stories in the Facebook News Feed. Which brings us back to the elephant in the room where Snapchat’s concerned: Instagram.

And I hate Instagram.

Go to my Instagram feed, which I think is public? Honestly, don’t know, and not gonna check. I love going to my Instagram feed and viewing the posts and Stories of the accounts I follow. Why? Because they’re mostly fluffy puppies. Go check out Chloe the Mini Frenchie and Teddy the Corgi. They’re the reason that I’m a weekly active user of Instagram.

I hate that Instagram is all about the number of likes and followers. I hate the Kardashians.

Instagram isn’t my go-to social network, and I’m pretty confident it never will be. Because, to be quite honest, I hate filtering my life. I hate the vain, highly-styled, carefully-crafted, unsurprising, deliberate nature of it. I hate that it’s a network all about the number of likes and followers. And I hate the Kardashians.

I know Snapchat isn’t perfect. Their racially-insensitive and scientifically-inaccurate lenses are, uh, not a good look. The fact that they don’t really prioritize Android devices and instead cater to iPhone users is just kind of weird at this stage. And I don’t like that they have a weirdly one-way, non-supportive relationship with its creators. I know from speaking to many of the most popular Viner users that this strategy didn’t work out well for themor Vine, either. And of course: Evan Spiegel said some bad shit in college. Snap’s also never released a workplace diversity report, unlike their peers in the tech industry. So, it goes without saying: They’ve got some work to do.

And yeah, at the end of the day, it’s just an app.

But these platforms are also places we’re spending increasing amounts of time in every daythey’re frames that we’re living our lives through, articulating something, creating something, sending some part of us out into the world. And so much more than its contemporaries, Snapchat, if nothing else, stands for things: Authenticity. Spontaneity. And that’s why I love Snapchat. It’s where you’ll find me at my most authentic. It’s where you’ll actually get to know who I really am.

If I let you, of course.

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