The Snapchat Revolution

It’s fast, funny and pretty complicated. Introducing Snapchat, a trendy app that has been making waves as of late. Although it was launched in 2011, it started gaining popularity on a global scale only recently, with Namibian users also joining in on the fun.

Created by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown, former Stanford University students turned multi-millionaires, Snapchat is all about videos and pictures with friends.

Download the app for free on your Android or iOS device and sign up for free too. If you’re younger than 13, a kiddie-friendly version of Snapchat, known as Snapkidz, is available to you and involves quite a few restrictions.

For those over 13, you’ll have to verify your account which takes less than 10 minutes to complete. Once this is done, it’s time to add your contacts with the ‘Find Friends’ screen. Snapchat will use the phone numbers you already have stored in your phone and see who’s available to add. Your contacts will also be able to find you. Don’t have any numbers to add? No worries. You can find more friends by adding their Snapchat names.

So how does it work? Simple. Using the camera, take a picture (known as a snap) and either add a short caption, draw or filter your snap. After this, you can choose how long you want friends to view your snaps ranging from one to 10 seconds. And you can save your snaps before you let them go public.

Interestingly enough, snaps will not stay online forever. After 24 hours, they are automatically deleted, so if you’re going to start snapping, you better keep your profile updated!

To view snaps sent to you, you have to press and hold the snap you want to look at, like keeping your finger on a button without letting go. Each snap has a timer, so you’ll see how long the snap sent to you is. If you screenshot your friend’s snap, they will get a notification, so no spying allowed!

Stories consist of pictures and videos, but stories can be posted to your feed, which resembles a timeline, and you and your friends can check it out. Whenever you want to post something to your story, remember to select the ‘Add to Your Story’ option.

With snaps, you are also able to add up ‘scores’ which are the total snaps you have sent and received. Sounds fun? Well, download the app today and get snapping!

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