For transparency, I am a 19-year-old male attending The University of Texas at Austin. I am extremely interested in social media’s role in our society as well as how it is currently evolving. Thus, the views I provide here are my own, but do stem from observation of not only my own habits but my peers’ habits as well.
I really enjoyed this post not because it talks about how teenagers are using social media (Web 2.0? LOL) but there were a few things I’ve never heard of before. YikYak, WhatsApp, Kik and GroupMe are all news to me.
Here’s what’s interesting and maybe a further example of how disconnected I am from today’s web. Most of these startups I’ve never heard of just seem like a replacement to SMS, iMessage, BBM, Skype. SMS and Email are two very established and widely supported, mostly free to use, contain no advertisements and are available on every Internet connected device in the world. Why would you use GroupMe over SMS? I propose the same question to WhatsApp and Kik.
Do we really need to disrupt email or SMS?
I know one person who uses SnapChat. I was watching her use it the other night and I asked, “Why didn’t your friend just SMS that photo to you and the other 5 people? It’s a picture of her sandwich” Her response, “I don’t know, this is just what she uses”
Really strange use-case that we have to download an app that does what the built-in ones already do.