Are app owners suffering from a lack of originality and creativity? Mashable’s article focused on how WhatsApp will soon look similar to Snapchat.
The update will allow users to add doodles, text, emoji and captions to photos and videos that are able to be shot and shared within the app. Front-facing flash will also be added to the app, increasing the users ability to have better lit selfies.
Earlier this year, Instagram followed in the footsteps of Snapchat, adding a feature called Stories to their app. This update was a complete duplicate of Snapchat’s feature, including the name. Aside from Instagram, Facebook also added a new Snapchat-like camera feature within its News Feed.
Ever since Instagram introduced their copied update, I have utilized their “stories” option once. Snapchat now and always will be my go to app when sharing pictures, videos and stories, as it is the original creator of snapchat stories, lenses and filters.
If future apps continue to steal Snapchat’s features, each app will end up blending together and essentially lack originally and creativity. Personally, Snapchat is the only app I use daily, so no matter what a new app update introduces, it’s very unlikely that I will utilize it.
WhatsApp and Instgram are both owned by Facebook, and Facebook seems obsessed with SnapChat. It must see SnapChat as a real threat. It’s too bad that their knee-jerk reaction is to replicate SnapChat features instead of trying to innovate past those features to whatever the next innovation will be.
I recently wrote a blog post about Snapchat’s “Spectacles”- an almost rip-off of Google’s “Google Glass.” The similarities here are noticeable. It seems like every social media outlet is trying to copy ideas for one another while trying to remain unique. In the end, I think you’re right; they all kind of become a ghost of each other. The originality and uniqueness of one will eventually just become a feature of another. The social media user will likely use remain using the “brand” of social media to which they are accustomed.
This is absolutely crazy that a company can steal the ideas of another. Snapchat may have lost the battle by not correctly patenting their invention and ideas. The only way for them to survive is to do something more out of the box. They are going to have to continue to add features that keep the competition trying to keep up. Their new glasses idea may work but I think it is too much of a copy from Google. A student in my introduction to advertising class shared that snapchat is also trying to put their technology in high priced cameras. Essentially they are trying to help people post pictures directly from their high dollar Nikon’s and Cannons which may be where the app lives on if people keep stealing their ideas.
This is a neat topic.
I have to agree with Joe here, Snapchat is going to have to do something new and creative to be a step ahead of their competitors. And although this copying thing is obviously unoriginal, I kind of enjoy it. When ever one company copies another it forces the original company to up their game. Giving us better technology or different features to play with.