Snapchat

Snapchat is a social media service primarily based on sharing ephemeral photo and video content. The Venice, California company’s app is extremely popular with millennials, who make up its primary demographic.

Unlike most social photo sharing services, where users are encouraged to build a library of content, Snapchat primarily focuses on content that disappears after set time limits. Users can send snaps directly to friends, or add them to a 24-hour Snapchat Story that all followers can access.

Snapchat is particularly known for its lens feature, which allows users to to add real-time effects to their selfies by means of facial detection. The app is also well-known for its image markup features, such as adding Geostickers — stickers that appear based on the current city of the user — and text to photos and videos.

Criticized for its lack of user-discovery features, some first-time users may find Snapchat difficult to understand, because there are no search or suggestion apparatuses for finding new users to follow.

Recently, the Facebook-owned Instagram added a new Instagram Stories feature to its photo sharing app, which strikingly resembles Snapchat. This is particularly notable when you consider that Facebook, at one time, attempted to purchase Snapchat for 3 billion in cash.