Have you ever sent a photo to a friend you later wished you could erase? Maybe you had your eyes closed, or you noticed a stray nose hair upon second glance.
Snapchat, an iPhone photo-messaging app, lets you do just that. And as of today, it's available for Android users as well.
The concept's simple: Users can take a photo with their phone, add text if they choose to, then set a duration — between one and 10 seconds — and send it to a friend. Once the recipient opens the photo, it's deleted from both phones after the allotted time.
"It really empowers expressive and frequent content," Evan Spiegel, Snapchat's founder, tells Mashable. "With social media there's a lot of self-editing — people want to create a personal brand. With Snapchat, it's a lot more about communicating how you feel, what you're thinking and where you are right there in the moment."
Spiegel was originally scheduled to announce the Android addition today at the Dive Into Mobile conference in New York City, but it was cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy.
Since it launched in September 2011, Snapchat has amassed a huge following — predominately among the younger generation. The app receives a whopping 20 million "snaps" per day, Spiegel says, and has accumulated more than a billion snaps total since it launched last year. He wouldn't disclose the exact number of users.
Along with its popularity, though, it's gathered speculation about the "self destructive" feature being used for teen sexting — the idea that a crude text can be sent, then promptly deleted with no evidence or concern of it going viral. Spiegel assures it's a misconception.
"Operating at this scale, I mean, I'm sure people tend to use it in … creative ways," he says, "but that's not the behavior that we've been seeing."
Every Snapchat photo has to be taken the moment it's sent, he says, so the concern that students are sexting during class is highly unlikely. 80% of snaps are sent during the day, he says.
"If your kids were sexting in class, their teacher would know. The photos have to be taken right at the time the photo is forwarded," he says.
The app also has a 12+ rating in the iTunes store for "mild sexual content/nudity" — another misconception, Spiegel says. It was actually his team's idea to give the app that rating.
"We want parents to have a dialogue with their children about the services they use," he says. "Obviously, when we're talking about user-generated content, even if it's just between friends, there really are no guarantees on our part about what type of content they'll share. So we're just laying it out there with the rating."
So, overall, why have photos disappear immediately?
"The idea, really, is that the images expiring means that you can be really silly, really funny, really ugly," he says. "And that's a really powerful and exciting thing — especially my generation, who grew up with everything they've ever done retweeted, liked or forwarded all over the Internet.
"Personally, I send so many photos everyday that if they were all saved in my gallery I wouldn't have any space on my phone," he continues. "So that's one very practical application, too."
Snapchat is available now for free on both iOS and Android devices now.
What do you think? Is it worthwhile to have photos erase immediately? Would you use this with your friends?
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