If You Havn’t Got Your Head Around The Hype, Hop On The Train And Learn How To Use Snapchat
1. Slay on Snapchat: what you’ve got till it’s gone
From modern way of sending raunchy pics to probably the most talked about and popular app of daily communication, we present to you : Snapchat.
When it first shot to prominence in 2011, it wasn’t taken overly seriously: largely seen as tool for teens to send nudes. Perhaps very few anticipated that it would develop into one of the most popular apps in the world; and not (just) because people like sending naked selfies but because of its features.
If you haven’t got your head around the hype yet, hop on the train and learn how to use it. Whether you’re a 57 year old dad that’s trying to understand the kids, or a 13 year old teen just finding your way round it for the first time – shit, you might even be a Snapchat pro trying to learn a couple of tricks – it doesn’t matter, because it’s never too late to get with the times. And in this case, the time is Snapchat.
Lucky for you, here at Fizzy Mag we are the ultimate snapchat pros and will kindly teach you how you too can master the fine art of Snap-chatting. Are you sitting comfortably, screen shot finger at the ready? Good, because your Snapchat 101 lesson begins now.
First of, let’s start with the what is and how to:
Timer
Snapchat gives you the power of deciding how long the receiver of your snap can view the image. To choose how long you simply need to set the timer to your desired time.
After the image has been opened the timer runs down and when time’s up the picture deletes itself. If you fear secret screenshots, we’ve got some good news for you: Snapchat notifies the sender as soon a picture is being screenshotted. You = 1 / Sad Stalkers = 0
Repeating Snaps
Incase you skipped a snap by accident and you want to re-watch it, you can. All you need to do is to press the little square beside the name of the sender and watch the little square fill itself with color. When the little square isn’t empty anymore, you can re open it. Just like when a snap is screenshot, the sender will be notified.
Now the thing with repeating snaps is this: you can only repeat one snap a day. This means you cannot endlessly re watch your friends adorable cat snap so cherish every second.
Stories
The difference between a regular snap and a Snapchat story lies in the people who see it. In a regular snap, you choose the people that can view the snap, but in a story all of your friends can watch the snap for the span of 24 hours. In this case, snaps can be reached as one pleases without the storyteller (or however you want to call it) constantly being notified BUT you can still see who watched your story only, not how many times the various viewers have watched it. Sounds tricky in theory but in reality its pretty simple. NB: just remember if you have your boss on there and you accidentally post to your story that work sucks arse, things could get awkward. A cautionary tale.
Videos
So the cool thing about Snapchat is that you’re not limited to only posting pictures but you can post videos too. Just press the circle for the time you want your snap video to be and hey presto you are recording. The downside is that the max of seconds you can shoot is 10, which can be annoying but will also develop a quite impressive skill of squashing as much information as possible into a pretty small time frame.
Fun fact: by swiping past your videos you can rewind, slow down or speed up your videos.
Pro tip: after putting a filter on a snap, many think that’s it but it’s actually not: Let’s say you want to speed up your Snapchat video but also want the date to be on it. In this case all you need to do is press / keep one finger on the screen after one filter is already on and swipe with another finger like you normally would when putting a filter on.
Points
You might see a seemingly odd number beside your name when you look at your, or creep on your friends’, Snapchat profile. This number represents the amount of snaps you’ve sent. Pretty irrelevant in itself but it does come in handy when you and your friend get into an argument about who’s the bigger Snapchat-addict; trust me, you will have this discussion.
Chat
Besides snapping there’s also a lot of chatting you can do on this app. (Peep those wordplay skills) By either swiping to the left on a name or simply clicking the top right speech bubble, you can choose who you want to text. Just like the pictures, chats delete themselves unless you save them by pressing each message till the text turns bold. Whilst your text partner won’t be notified about the saving, they will receive a message if / when you screenshot the chat. FYI: videos and images can be sent as well.
Video chat
Once you’re on the chat page, you will find a little chart above your keyboard. The last icon displays a camera and when you are online and your friend is as well and you press that icon you can face time them. It’s kinda hard because it’s quite self explanatory and again, this may sound more complicated than it actually is.
Calls
Incase you’re bored of seeing your friend’s face, or are over getting cut before you could even get to the good part of your story, Snapchat also gives you the option of phoning fellow users. Once again, go the the chat page, a press of the phone icon will open this function and you can talk away.
Explore page
Just like Instagram, Snapchat has an ‘Explore’ page. This is where you can choose between several networks like Vice, Buzzfeed or MTV. Here you can catch up in the latest in pop culture, political, or any other kind of, news.
Filters
This is probably the most known and loved Snapchat feature. You don’t even need to have the app in order to know about these because they’re literally, like, everywhere. Without knowing there’s a great chance that you’ve stumbled over, liked or retweeted a meme probably mocking certain filters: in particular, the dog filter also known as the “hoe filter” or “basic bitches filter.”
No matter what you choose to call it, we can all agree on the undeniable fact that it’s pretty cute but this is not the only lovable Snapchat filter, in fact there are lots of them and Snapchat switches them up every now and then. From adorable, to borderline creepy, Snapchat’s got it all. You’re bound to find at least one filter you’ll get hooked on but in the very unlikely case that you don’t, you can still always swap out your face with someone else’s by either face swapping with someone beside you or just importing someone’s face onto yours, or even with something totally random like your knee cap (tried and tested, just for you!). It’s pretty hilarious / harmless way to boredom-proof yourself.
So that’s it. These are the basic Snapchat For Beginners features you need to know, broken down. Sure, these aren’t all of Snapchat’s features but we’d hate to give them all away because everyone should feel the joy of unexpectedly finding a new feature to tell your friends about.
Now all you’ve got to do is download the app, add a couple of people (and fizzymag) and get snappinâ.
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