LinkedIn launches its own Snapchat Stories. Here’s why it shouldn’t have
No app is safe from the Stories plague
LinkedIn confirms to TechCrunch that it plans to build Stories for more sets of users, but first it’s launching “Student Voices” just for university students in the U.S. The feature appears atop the LinkedIn home screen and lets students post short videos to their Campus Playlist.
My note: Since 2012, I unsuccessfully tried to convince two library directors to approve similar video “channel” on the SCSU library web page with students’ testimonies and ability for students to comment / provide feedback regarding the issues raised in the videos. Can you guess the outcome of such proposal? https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/11/03/video-skills-digital-literacy/
A LinkedIn spokesperson tells us the motive behind the feature is to get students sharing their academic experiences like internships, career fairs and class projects that they’d want to show off to recruiters as part of their personal brand.
The EU’s code of conduct on countering illegal online hate speech was first presented in 2016 and initially had four major internet platforms that participated – Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube. Snapchat is the seventh major IT platform to join the EU’s non-binding ethics regulations to fight illegal online hate speech.
Some 79 percent of U.S. 13- to 18-year-olds surveyed said they have a Snapchat account, more than any other type of social media. Of that age group, 73 percent have an Instagram account and just 57 percent say they are on Facebook.
Respondents had to choose only one social network they could keep if they were “trapped on a deserted island.” This time, 44 percent of teens picked Snapchat, ahead of Instagram (24 percent) and Facebook (14 percent). One year ago, for RBC’s same survey question, the percentage of teens who insisted on keeping Snapchat on a desert island led with 28 percent — suggesting the app is still growing in necessity/popularity among young people.
A two-part workshop running 90 minutes each session on Thursday, August 24, 2017 at 2:30pm Eastern/1:30 Central/12:30 Mountain/11:30am Pacific and Thursday, August 31, 2017 at 2:30pm Eastern/1:30 Central/12:30 Mountain/11:30am Pacific
Snapchat is one of the 10 most downloaded apps in the world and a key means of communication for individuals aged 13-34. Emerging quickly onto the social media scene, Snapchat has left many librarians wondering how to incorporate it into their outreach strategy. In this two-part workshop, social media expert Paige Alfonzo responds to this question and teaches you how to successfully leverage Snapchat as a marketing tool—one that can be used for readers’ advisory, promotion, information dissemination, and a variety of other marketing purposes.
In part one, Alfonzo covers the ins and outs of the platform—from teaching you the basics of setting up an account, adding friends, and sending snaps to demonstrating how to annotate snaps, incorporate filters, and use Snapchat Stories and Memories. In part two, Alfonzo delves into the specifics of how to make Snapchat work in libraries by discussing how librarians have successfully used Snapchat to promote their services, then she provides you with an opportunity to participate hands on with Snapchat by sending snaps to each other. The workshop will leave you with useful approaches to get creative with the app and expand your social media strategy.
The purely episodic nature of Snapchat works to promote timely engagement and audience retention through consistent sharing of snaps. By combining the longevity of your feed posts with the 24-hour duration of your story segments, you can generate urgency while providing consistent and engaging content for your Instagram followers. Bottom line: Snapchat relies on 24-hour stories from users, providing content that is purely episodic and temporary to viewers. Instagram content can be delivered episodically through stories or more permanently through the feed.
#2: How Filters Compare
Snapchat Geofilters for Location-Based Snaps
When you want a customized geofilter to reflect an event or location, Snapchat geofilters will frame your image or video snaps with branding and themes. While large organizations often sponsor geofilters on a bigger scale (think the Olympics or national holidays), Snapchat also lets you create and use your own geofilter.
Snapchat Face-Mapping and Motion Filters for Creative Snaps
Instagram Filters for Various Coloring Effects
Bottom line: Instagram story filters are limited to overall color, contrast, and lighting adjustments. Snapchat filters provide more options for customization, motion, and branding from the filters themselves.
#3: How Hashtags Work
At present, you can use hashtags in your Instagram and Snapchat stories to indicate segment topics or commentary. However, the hashtags don’t provide any functionality for users. In other words, users can’t tap a hashtag to search for that term within the app.
My note: the US News and World Report is behind times on its reporting, unless this article has been held for a while by their editor: teenagers moved from Snapchat as quickly as they moved away from Facebook to Twitter and from Twitter to Snapchat. The generation, which is running US News and World Report is way too slow to notice the nomadic social media moves of the Millennials.
The cited case from Nebraska, Katelyn Gilroy, a library media specialist, who is using Snapchat or school purposes, can undoubtedly have a niche in education, enticing students to learn about their library, reading, etc.
However, it is questionable to present the media specialist’s case from Nebraska as a blank statement; a case, which can be adopted nationwide. Ms. Pannoni fails to mention that since 15 years ago, when instant messaging was the “snapchat” of the times, U.S. students consider these applications their “virtual mall,” where they like to hang out, but are not keen to consider them for educational purposes. In the same fashion, U.S. students are somehow unique in considering Facebook, later Twitter, then Snapchat and now Kik, Yammer, Celly, or Elgg a domain reserved for their private, extracurricular activities.
More about use of social media in education in this IMS blog:
The author erroneously focuses on Snapchat as a service and university administration, monitoring and censorship; it is a basic issue of education. Educating the Millennials and Gen Z about privacy, netiquette and digital humanity.
Education is about letting students explore, fail, learn from their failure and improve. #FinlandPhenomenon
Still trying to understand the academy’s apparent obsession with monitoring and controlling/influencing every possible aspect of student and faculty behavior, on and off campus. Sometimes I can’t decide if it’s kind of a Stalinist control thing, a guy in the back of a windowless van thing, or some kind of extension of a juvenile obsession with everyone’s behavior but your own. That someone complains does not automatically suggest that someone must “do something,” particularly when “doing something” is often prohibited by law to begin with (in the case of administrators and the university).
“According to research by Sumpto…as much as 77 percent of college students use Snapchat every day.
37 percent of the study respondents cited “creativity” as their main use of the app. “Keeping in touch” and “easier than texting” were reasons for 27 percent and 23 percent, respectively.”
Reasons young adults ages 18-26 use snapchat:
“I like sharing weird things I see when I’m out…When you get ugly selfies from someone, that’s how you know you’re good friends.”
“I only ever use it for funny pictures or to show what I’m doing to my friends, but I have people that use it as a replacement for texting.”
“Snapchat is the ultimate social media tool — users want to share their lives to anyone they choose to elicit possible feedback, but without the necessity of it being stored…Snapchat provides an easier answer to Facebook’s ‘What are you doing right now?’ I use it personally to stay in touch with friends and show people what I’m doing.”
Colleges are also starting to get on the bandwagon — Snapchat launched Our Campus Story in October 2014 to four schools.
Robbins, S. P., & Singer, J. B. (2014). From the editor—The medium is the message: Integrating social media and social work education. Journal Of Social Work Education, 50(3), 387-390.
Stretton, T., & Aaron, L. (2015). Feature: The dangers in our trail of digital breadcrumbs. Computer Fraud & Security, 201513-15. doi:10.1016/S1361-3723(15)70006-0
Ekman, U. (2015). Complexity of the ephemeral – snap video chats. Empedocles: European Journal For The Philosophy Of Communication, 5(1/2), 97-101. doi:10.1386/ejpc.5.1-2.97_1