Would you use Instagram to send your friends photos 16 times per day?
Probably not. But people clearly like to communicate visually.
Snapchat saw an opportunity to create an entirely new visual-based communication channel. And it was all hinging on one genius idea.
Taking a photo every time you want to send a message to a friend seems to fly in the face of typical product psychology advice. It’s a significant amount of friction.
So how did Snapchat get users to send each other photos so regularly?
It’s all in the way they disappear.
When you send a photo, the receiver can only see it for 10 seconds and it’s gone, forever.
Without having to worry about any fears related to a photo sticking around forever it eliminates any mental baggage to do with taking ‘snaps’.
This same strategy also lead to the creation of the engagement-boosting ‘stories’ feature. Other social platforms ended up blatantly copying this as it was simply too successful to ignore.
Taking a photo every time you want to send a message to a friend seems to fly in the face of typical product psychology advice. It’s a significant amount of friction.
So how did Snapchat get users to send each other photos so regularly?
It’s all in the way they disappear.
When you send a photo, the receiver can only see it for 10 seconds and it’s gone, forever.
Without having to worry about any fears related to a photo sticking around forever it eliminates any mental baggage to do with taking ‘snaps’.
This same strategy also lead to the creation of the engagement-boosting ‘stories’ feature. Other social platforms ended up blatantly copying this as it was simply too successful to ignore.
Is an element of fear holding your users back from a key behaviour? Make sure you completely understand the reasons for that fear. Then eliminating the fear will become much more straightforward.
This strategy enabled Snapchat to firmly position itself in the minds of users as a true communications channel between friends - not just a social media.
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