Since the very beginning, Snapchat was designed to offer an alternative to traditional social media where people feel pressured to post only their most perfect content.
That’s why Snapchatters are greeted by a Camera ready to capture their perspective when they open the app, and why messages delete by default, mimicking how we talk to friends in real life, where conversations happen in the moment.
Our number one use case is (and always has been) messaging, and today, we’re the place where three out of four 13-24 year olds in over 25 countries go every day to communicate privately with their close friends.
To date, Snapchatters have had the option to have their Snaps or chats delete immediately after they have been viewed – similar to the dynamics of real-life conversations – or delete 24 hours after they’ve been seen. Messages that Snapchatters wanted to keep had to be saved on an individual basis.
Ephemerality has always been core to our design philosophy, and these default settings do not prevent us from being able to retain data while we review reports from our community and support valid requests from law enforcement.
We’re constantly listening to and learning from Snapchatters, and thoughtfully innovating based on their needs. In response to feedback from our community, we’re excited to offer a new setting in chat that we hope provides even more flexibility and control over conversations with the people who matter most.
This new option, testing now, allows Snapchatters to set their conversations to retain indefinitely, similar to how messages are saved in iMessage or SMS. Snapchatters will be able to opt in for this setting on a conversation-by-conversation basis – meaning they can, for example, choose to set their conversation with their closest friend to retain indefinitely, and let others continue to delete once they’ve been viewed. Participants in the conversation can update the settings at any time, and in-chat notices make sure the latest selections are clear.
While conversations will continue to delete by default, we hope this new option offers our community more ways to customize how they connect with their friends.
For more information on how to change your settings check out our support page [LINK].
