SnapChat wasn’t meant for people that still use Facebook regularly. It was meant for the younger generation - the generation of fast video clips and Internet narcissism.
So maybe that’s why finding someone on SnapChat was such a difficult thing to do. It’s kind of like being invited to one of those secret clubs - you either have the password or you don’t.
While playing to the cool crowd is all fun and games (and is effective about keeping the older folks out), it serves its purpose all too well. SnapChat has found that it’s not attracting many new users, and older users are starting to tire of the app (as today’s younger generation will). To fix the issue, SnapChat has decided to (finally) make it easier to find people using the app.
You Can Now Join
It feels like SnapChat has suddenly sent out invites to the B list (or maybe even C list because the B-listers could at least ask someone from the A list how to play). If you gave up on the app because you couldn’t find any friends, this process has become a whole lot easier. Before, you had to take a photo of a friend’s BOOR code (which was super tiresome) or find a friend’s username (which would be easier were it not for the fact that everyone has a really long SnapChat name).
Now, you can create a personal URL (kind of like how you can create one on LinkedIn) to send to any friends that you want to follow you (or want to follow you and request your code). You still get to be super picky about who gets to follow you, but this does make the whole process a lot simpler. Just ask someone to send you their URL and you’ll become instant SnapChat friends.
Sending Our Your URL
So how can you find your own personal URL? Simple go to the ‘Add Friends’ section of the app, pull down the dropdown, and select the ‘share username’ option. Once you tap on that selection, you will get a personalized URL that you can then send out to anyone you wish. Once you have sent it out, anyone that clicks on your URL will be immediately added to your friend list. This is a much simpler way to add friends than anything SnapChat has tried before.
While this way of adding friends might still be confusing for the Facebook crowd, it’s a much better idea as far as the business side of SnapChat goes. The whole app is based on followers and a friend system, and if you don’t have any friends on SnapChat, well, your snaps are kind of useless, right?
This new way of finding people on SnapChat doesn’t really appeal to me or anyone that doesn’t love SnapChat, but it might be a way for the cool kids to selectively send out invites (or URLs).
The Mystery of SnapChat
It seems like SnapChat’s appeal is slowly fading (which might be why the company is making things easier now), but the app is still popular. For those that aren’t familiar with SnapChat, it’s a fast way to show the world a video clip of you and what you do without worrying that the clip will stay on the Internet or in the app forever - it disappears in a snap.