Seven Keys to Your Media Habits

Online Community: Snapchat

Interactivity: Snapchat is designed to alert consumers when someone is trying to contact them. The second their finger hits the screen, the other person receives a message about it. Any information can be sent to anyone in a matter of seconds, faster than it can be said out loud. I use Snapchat more than I used iMessage because it is so much easier to send pictures. iMessage takes a second to send a picture, but most of my conversations on Snapchat are simply picture with a line of typing in front of said picture. It makes me feel closer to whoever I am talking to. I like to use this when my roommate is out and about. If it's getting late and I start to get worried, I simply snap her and her response will give me na explanation of what's going on, and a picture of her whereabouts.

Reach: As long as someone has an internet connection and an email address, they can easily access Snapchat and send friend requests to anyone they want. It is very easy to find strangers on Snapchat, and even easier to find their location. Snapchat has a feature where you can see where your friends are when they are active on the social media site. This feature is optional and if your location is off no one can see where you are, and you can pick and choose who can see your location or not. I don't have my location on at all and I do not look at other people's locations and I have been very careful to not engage with strangers on the internet.

Mobility: Snapchat is available to people all over the world in many languages. There are language translators so any message can be changed into most languages with the push of a button. Everyone in the world can be on Snapchat at the same time and message up to 32 people at the same time in the same group chat. I personally like to talk to one person at a time, as it is easy to get overlooked by other people adding into the conversation

Storage: Within Snapchat, you can edit and delete texts or videos before the other person can see it, and save their messages in the chat box to read later. You can save messages, or screenshot them to save to your device. With that begin said, the other person gets a notification if any of the above actions happen, which stops many people from doing this. I am not very involved in the drama that Snapchat can create, but. I have seen it and so much is caused by a simple sentence being saved in a chat box.