• thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      11 months ago

      it’s one of the only commonly known messaging platform to most people that:

      1: isn’t owned by a company that many people hate, even if they don’t know much about it.

      2: isn’t platform locked and doesn’t discriminate.

      3: doesn’t require money or verification to use.

      i can see how it’s kinda settled out this way. whatsapp never caught on in the u.s. because everyone here was happy with sms and mms when the rest of the world was picking up Whatsapp. from what i understand that’s literally just because texting was cheap in the u.s… now people want more than mms, but apple is being apple about it so we need a third party app. by this point Whatsapp is owned by Facebook and the “privacy” of it is openly mocked by the average non tech person. everyone hates Facebook so the idea of willingly adopting another Facebook messenger that you’re not already on seems crazy. anyone that would accept that is just going to use Facebook messenger instead. anyone that wouldn’t will find something better.

      Snapchat has no big controversies. no one knows who owns them. they don’t really try to be more than a messaging platform. i can see why people would uncritically choose it as their default. i bet it’s big among the kids who don’t play that whole blue bubble iphone supremacy game, but don’t use discord either. so i guess the non nerdy kids that aren’t elitist dicks. that’s who I’d guess uses it amongst the youth these days.

      edit: before the suggestions come, I know these aren’t good solutions. I’m just theorizing why. getting my friends on matrix as best i can…

      • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        And here I am, using Google messages, Facebook messenger, Whatsapp and line. And teams and discord. And steam chat.

        Oof

    • UsernameIsTooLon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      11 months ago

      It’s the WhatsApp equivalent in the US tbh. People ask for each other’s Snapchat instead of numbers sometimes these days

        • Sl00k@programming.devEnglish
          2·
          11 months ago

          Realistically this graph wouldn’t include Snapchat, as it’s less of a “social media” than the others. Most people nowadays use it strictly as a messaging platform.

        • UsernameIsTooLon@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          11 months ago

          No, because those don’t have social media functions built in. Snapchat has those TikTok slideshows and ads among posting pictures of yourself too. It’s more of an all in one that many use

    • AsheHole@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      11 months ago

      Everyone at my work uses Snapchat regularly. I was pretty surprised to hear them all mentioning it as I hadn’t really heard of it in years. They’re between the ages of 22-40s if that changes anything.