Facebook Vs. Snapchat

pexels pixabay 533446

pexels pixabay 533446

The Battle for Social Supremacy Heats Up

It’s pretty safe to say that Facebook is the premier social media platform when it comes to establishing social supremacy and achieving marketing mastery. Mark Zuckerberg’s empire building social network is a certified kingmaker and with the acquisition of other hot apps such as Whatsapp and Instagram, there is good reason to believe upstarts such as Snapchat, which showed so much promise initially, will slowly go the way of the buffalo.

It probably won’t happen overnight. Snapchat is really cool. It just might not be cool enough to survive unless it can adapt to the changing landscape of competition.

From a branding perspective, it is really powerful to be able to direct users to “snap it” or “let me snap that”. Instagram can’t quite compete with a similarly catchy phrase to describe it’s activity and use. Think about how ubiquitous the phrase and concept of “Googling” something is by now? Clearly there is something uniquely potent about having a whole language built up around how people use and describe their actions across a social network.

From a business perspective, Snapchat is faltering because it does not support the usage of outside links. It is very hard to be a marketing tool when one cannot provide outside links to a website or anywhere else outside of Snapchat itself. This is a really negative point for individuals like myself but even more so for brands that may have wanted to capitalize on the unique visual aesthetic Snapchat was able to so clearly cultivate.

There is a good reason why nearly every brand in the world is on Facebook and up to 70% of them are on Instagram. Not only is everyone on these platforms, they support business and marketing aims in a way that Snapchat simply cannot compete with.

Facebook and Instagram let you connect with the world while Snapchat limits you to the contacts in your phone and the ability to send quick messages that disappear. As much as you might want to, if you want to advertise something cool across Snapchat, you really can’t. As much as you might want to search for new friends or potential leads on Snapchat, you really can’t.

It is really starting to seem like for as much promise as Snapchat held, it is rapidly losing prominence and placement in the ever expanding battle for social media supremacy. Screenshotting snap codes is quite simply not efficient and in my opinion is extremely unlikely to ever catch on the way core functions in Facebook and Instagram have.

Despite my feelings about the platform or its long term viability, I have a loyal following on Snapchat. Why? Mainly because I pushed them there from my Instagram page. None of my friends, followers or fans would have found me on Snapchat if I hadn’t directed them there from another social channel.

At the end of the day, it is starting to seem pointless to push Instgram followers to another platform when I am able to offer them the exact same type of content in the form of Insta Stories, the only difference being it doesn’t have as snappy and memorable a name.

Maybe I should coin a new name for it…

Why don’t we let you guys decide…

I will be continuing to to use Snapchat, to “snap stuff” if you will, but I will just be uploading the same exact content to Instagram Stories.

So maybe, until Snapchat’s inevitable demise, we brand this practice “ Snap to Story”?

Hmmm or:  “Snory”,  “Nasty”, “Snapstory Insta”, “Insta Story”, “Instory”?

What do you think?

Can Snapchat survive or is it destined to have it’s best features co-opted by Facebook and Instagram?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.Required fields are marked *

Related Posts