What Snapchat Might Learn from Facebook

In the week before the election, for forty-eight hours, you could open Snapchat and see President Obama trying to get you to vote for Hillary Clinton. The appearance, on a made-for-Snapchat political show called “Good Luck America,” was notable only because of where it was happening: on an app for people in their teens and twenties, who, as far as many people in their thirties and up can tell, mostly use it to send one another pictures of their faces morphed into tacos. At the time, it was only just becoming clear that the churn of news on the best-known social-media platforms had profoundly influenced public opinion about the Presidential candidates. But Snapchat was different. If Facebook and Twitter were crowded town squares—the locus of democracy at its meanest and dirtiest—Snapchat was the playground around the corner, a place reserved for silliness and fun. In August, Farhad Manjoo wrote in the Times that the app was among several that were “creating a charming alternative universe online—a welcome form of earnest, escapist entertainment that makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.” For the President to appear on the app was unusual, and even his performance there seemed almost jokey at moments. “People, this is Barack Obama,” the President proclaimed at one point, the video angle suggestive of a selfie. “If I can figure out how to Snapchat, you can figure out how to go vote.”