Electronic industry: downfall of original ideas

Snapchat recently released a new update for iOS and Android devices on May 1, adding a new feature called Chat. It enables users to video chat live and send text messages. 

Snapchat was originally released as social media app that allowed users to send pictures to others that delete themselves within a few seconds. After the new update, the newly implemented features of live video chat and instant messaging try to make the app one cohesive experience.

Although the new Chat feature has good intentions, its implementation is lacking qualities necessary to prove it’s worth the update. Chat is essentially just a less convenient form of Apple’s Facetime, forcing people to hold onto the screen during the video call.

Users do not receive notifications when being called, leaving the caller to awkwardly stare at a small bubble of their face, hoping that the other will decide to call from their end as well.

“The Facetime tool seems pointless because you have to be on the chat window with the other person at the same exact time,” senior Krishna Unadkat said. “Having to hold down on the screen in order to keep the video call going is annoying.”

It is also similar to iMessenger, but with a restraint on languages and emoticons. Although iMessenger does not automatically delete messages as Snapchat does, it offers the same quick response style as Snapchat’s new feature.

Snapchat also emphasizes a lack of innovation from tech companies in recent years. Pictures, texts and videos have become increasingly widespread in the media, and many original ideas are being drained while old ideas go through a recycling process.

App creators have come off as desperate in their “new” updates that are thinly veiled reproductions of ideas that have clearly been juiced dry. Snapchat has become one of these companies, simply copying features in an attempt to blend all of the best apps.

“Having a regular chat within the app completely defeats the purpose of the whole ‘snap’ thing,” Unadkat said. “The whole point of the app is to be able to send pictures to the person, so giving users an option to use the app as a generic messaging app while taking away the accessibility and ease of use of the original purpose is annoying.”

Snapchat started off as an innovative app to quickly send unsavable pictures to friends but has evolved into an idea that is just too complicated to identify as just a picture taking app.