If you’re over the age of 30 (and I’m being generous here) Snapchat probably isn’t one of your go-to apps. In fact, you might not even know what it is. Is it a social network? Is it like Instagram? Isn’t it that app that Instagram copied a bunch of features from after the company refused to sell to Facebook for billions of dollars?
In this order: sort of, sort of, and yes.
But if you asked Snap, Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel what Snapchat is, he’d probably point you to the video above. It’s the company’s very first TV commercial and an attempt to re-brand the app as “a new kind of camera.”
The commercial is the latest in a series of attempts by Snapchat to fight off Facebook—who has been shamelessly copying the app’s features into Instagram—and position itself as something better than a social network: a camera. Better yet, a camera “where how you feel matters more than how you look.”
In a way, it feels like Snapchat is trying to become the digital photography version of Lomography: where capturing snapshots is more important that proper photography—don’t think, just shoot. It’s point & shoot photography reborn, except as point & shoot & share… but maybe add a puppy dog mask or flower crown first because why not.
Maybe Snapchat—with its app and its wearable Spectacles—will become the digital Lomo LC-A or Diana: an imperfect outlet for imperfect pictures that takes some of the pressure out of photography. Not what I would call “a new kind of camera” exactly, but not a terrible idea either.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
