Why Snapchat’s Only Non-Ephemeral Content, The Profile GIF, Is A Big Deal
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Not everything on Snapchat disappears. As much as the app wants memories to span just 10 seconds and live for just 24 hours, one piece of content doesn’t self destruct. The profile GIF. And through its permanence, Snapchat has found a way solve a major problem with its identity system and social graph.
At first, the point seemed to be to customize your Snapcode. This encouraged people to share it more widely, getting more users following each other. This strengthening of the social graph is critical for the company, since following people fills its app with content that keeps you coming back.
But since then, I’ve realized there’s another important purpose for the profile GIFs. They appear in the Added Me list when you follow someone. Here’s why that matters.
Before, when someone added you on Snapchat, you knew nothing but their username. Due to the app’s inherently anonymous nature, younger user base that’s less interested in tying all their online identities together, and its racy reputation as a sexting app, many people’s usernames provide little hint to who they are. You often can’t even tell the gender or language of someone by their username.
This is a much bigger problem for Snapchat than other apps like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter where people typically have some public content or a real name available that informs whether you want to follow them. [Update: Facebook just added its own form of profile GIFs by letting you upload a 7-second video as your profile pic.]
But the profile GIF provides more transparency to someone’s identity.
Now in the Added Me list, you’ll see the profile GIFs of anyone who’s created one. Immediately, just the fact that someone has a profile GIF tells you they know their way around Snapchat, and they’re probably better at creating content. You’ll also get a peek at their identity. Selfies can tell you someone’s age, gender, and more. Personally, I find really little kids send me more low-quality snaps than older teens and young adults, so I don’t follow them back. And finally, you get a little taste of their style. Did they do something funny with their GIF? Did they try to tell a tiny story?
As Snapchat evolves to provide more forms of content, communication, and utility, the profile’s significance is sure to grow. I hope Snapchat introduces group video chat, and the profile GIFs could work well as a holding screen while you wait for people to join the call. Though the app began as bare-bones ephemeral messaging, it’s becoming the hub of youth communication. Permanent GIFs give profiles the substance necessary to be a foundation of that hub.