Branden Harvey became a professional photographer at the age of 16. He has since become an extremely popular photographer on social media, boasting over 104,000 followers on Instagram and one of the largest followings of a photographer on Snapchat (with 50,000+ views per image shared). We spoke to Harvey about his unique career path and perspective.
It is no secret that Facebook has been hot on the trail of Snapchat. In 2013, the massive social network reportedly offered to buy the small Snapchat startup for three billion dollars. After being turned down, Facebook decided to try and invent their own alternatives - Poke and Slingshot. Despite the two applications being more full-featured, Snapchat prevailed. Now, Facebook has decided to ‘borrow’ some of Snapchat's features its primary mobile app.
Renowned Magnum photographer Alec Soth is experimenting with a new way of delivering photos to art buyers and a new way for art buyers to experience photos. One of his latest projects takes a page from Snapchat's book, using the social photo sharing service to sell photos that disappear after just 10 seconds of viewing.
A 16-year-old Pittsburgh teenager has been arrested for murder after taking a selfie with the body and sending the photographic evidence of his crime to a friend through Snapchat.
Reporters all over the world are digging for nuggets in documents that were leaked in Sony's hacking. Here's one of the interesting finds: back in March, Snapchat secretly purchased a company that builds stealthy camera glasses.
If Instagram is the digital version of Polaroid, then SnapChat is the digital version of those Mission Impossible messages that would self-destruct after you listened to them. Of course, one of those only exists in the movies... or we should say 'existed.'
Thanks to artist Diego Trujillo Pisanty and his project This Tape Will Self-Destruct, there is not a real-world printer that creates self-destructing photos ala. SnapChat.
We knew that Instagram was working on a Snapchat competitor of its own, and now that competitor has arrived... sort of... not really. It's called Bolt, and the 'sort of' and 'not really' have to do with the fact that the iOS and Android app is currently only available to people in New Zealand, Singapore and South Africa.
Last night, a number of Android-touting Instagram users noticed a peculiar banner within Instagram that previewed Bolt, a "one tap photo messaging [app].” Just as quickly as it had appeared for many, it disappeared. But not before a number of users captured and shared a screenshot, stirring up plenty of talk in the tech community.
After leaking ahead of time for the whole world to see, Facebook yesterday officially released Slingshot: its second attempt at a Snapchat competitor that adds an interesting twist to the ephemeral message dynamic.
Known for its clever combination of selfies, text and scribbles, the self-destructing messaging platform Snapchat has become a hit. So, it’s no surprise that social media giant Facebook is interested in taking a bite out of the ephemeral messaging market.
The company has even gone so far as to reportedly offer $3 billion for Snapchat at one point. But, rather than continuing to try and buy out Snapchat, Facebook has now decided to create its own competitor, an app that existed only as a rumor until yesterday.
In a world filled with more social media platforms than you can shake a stick at, it's inevitable companies are going to do their best to exploit the social media platforms to their benefit. Oftentimes it's tacky, but once in a while it's creative, unique and powerful -- as this ad by the World Wildlife Fund in Denmark and Turkey goes to show.
Uh-oh... this isn't good. Just as Snapchat's star seemed like it would continue rising indefinitely, the company has suffered a massive setback in the form of an information leak of massive proportions. Taking advantage of a recently-revealed vulnerability, hackers were able to pull 4.6 million usernames and phone numbers from the service and publish them online for the whole world to see.
Snapchat, famous for dealing with the problem of rising attention spans by whittling the life of a photo down to 10 seconds, has gotten a little more time-friendly with an update that includes a limited option for re-viewing images later.
Today was the day of the mystery Instagram event that had many a tech site speculating about what the Facebook-owned image sharing giant would announce. A couple of sources were close, but there's no longer any need to speculate because Instagram has let the cat out of the bag, and that cat's name is Instagram Direct.
Already live as I write this, Instagram Direct is a new service that will allow users to send direct messages complete with text and either photos or videos to a select group of people, rather than sharing them with your entire follower base.
The tech world is full of 'wars,' all of them over the attention of that flighty creature known as 'the consumer.' And one of the wars being raged most furiously is between the major social networks: the established behemoths Facebook, Instagram and Twitter; that stubborn network loved by photogs, Google+; and the new kid on the block that has everybody's undergarments in a bunch: Snapchat.
Well, Facebook has had its go at stealing some of Snapchat's market (both literally and through acquisition) and has been ultimately unsuccessful on all counts. Now it's Twitter's turn.
A few weeks ago, I found myself wandering around a local career fair -- the type of event I normally find pretty loathsome, or at least overcrowded an unhelpful. This time though, a fun surprise: representatives from Snapchat and Shutterfly stood at booths right next to each other.
Oh boy! I couldn't turn down the chance to chat with some folks more or less connected to the photo industry.
When Facebook spent the staggering amount of $1 billion on the Instagram acquisition, people the world over thought they were crazy for throwing that kind of money on an app that, at the time, hadn't generated any revenue.
Well, that acquisition turned out pretty well for CEO Zuckerberg, who has since allegedly turned his sights on Snapchat, only to have an even more ludicrous offer spurned. How much more ludicrous, you ask? Apparently, Snapchat recently turned down a $3 billion offer from the social media giant.
In the past, we've reported on potential loopholes and issues with Snapchat's disappearing picture system that allowed adamant users to take screenshots without sending notifications or review snaps that had expired, but SnapHack is on a whole other level.
SnapHack is an app for iOS that, for just $1, lets users pull and permanently save every single snap their friends send their way -- no more disappearing photos or videos.
Since it first burst onto the scene, Snapchat has become a major player in the social fabric of today. Once, the self-destructing photo messaging model was considered a fad, but no more. As Snapchat surges towards the possibility of a billion dollar valuation and usage statistics continue to climb, that "fad" is clearly more than just that.
But that doesn't mean the Snapchat team has been sitting in the office twiddling their thumbs, they've been hard at work creating an exciting update that was finally announced today called Stories.
Those who think that image sharing app Snapchat is a waste might want to skip over this post. Earlier today we found out that the app and its self-destructing photos are expanding with the release of the new Snapchat Micro app, a version specifically built for Samsung's Galaxy Gear smartwatch.
Privacy concerns abound in the digital age, especially where pictures are concerned. With massive social networks like Facebook and Instagram offering more-or-less on/off security with little in way of customization, apps that allow you to take your photos' privacy in your own hands by deleting the photo after a set amount of time have taken off (think Snapchat and Facebook's Poke).
Secret.li is such an app, only it takes a different approach at making the Facebook sharing of photos more secure by combing the self-destructing function of Snapchat with a few other privacy-focused features.
Snapchat may be having a tiny little issue when it comes to iOS 7 usability. Apple's updated mobile operating system (which is currently in beta) reportedly allows users to screenshot Snapchat "snaps" secretly.
Photo sharing is big business. Just ask Snapchat's founders. The service (launched in late 2011) has managed to raise somewhere in the neighborhood of $60 million in venture capital funding, an investment that pegs the value of the company at a staggering $800 million.
To say that SnapChat has taken off would be an understatement. When we first wrote about the app in December of last year, we were impressed that the (not entirely) self-destructing photo messaging app had managed to raise over $10 million at a $70 million valuation. Now, if we add a zero to each of those numbers we'd still fall short of what several sources are expecting from the SnapChat's latest round of funding.
After reading our previous article on how Decipher Forensics had managed to find and restore expired Snapchats on Android devices, a photographer named Nick got to thinking that he might be able to do the same thing on his jailbroken iPhone.
The idea was that, since these snaps were simply saved in a folder in the file system, he should be able to use an app such as iFile to browse to that folder and see, save or even e-mail them to himself. It turns out he can, and it only took Nick 10 minutes to figure out where "deleted" Snapchat videos were stored.
Snapchat has been a huge success since it was first introduced in September 2011. Competing with the likes of Instagram, Facebook and other photo sharing platforms, Snapchat set itself apart by offering the fleeting experience of disappearing photos. When you send a photo, you set a time-limit of up to 10 seconds. After that, the photo allegedly disappears.
But unfortunately for the app's user base, which is currently sharing a whopping 150 million photos daily, it turns out those photos aren't quite so fleeting. A Utah-based forensics firm has discovered that the photos are still stored on the receiving phone.
Now that filtered smartphone photos have taken over the photo sharing world, many people -- especially investors -- are wondering: what's next? One possible answer may be temporary photo sharing.
Just last week we reported that Snapchat had raised $10 million to continue pioneering the frontier. Now, a report has emerged that Facebook is working on its own mobile app that offers exactly the same thing.
If you haven't heard of the photo sharing app Snapchat yet then you probably will soon. The app -- which blew up earlier this year and is about to secure a boatload of venture capital -- is built around an incredibly simple concept: you don't always want to share photos on a permanent basis.
With Snapchat you can share a photo with a friend just like you would with any other sharing app, but instead of that person now having your photo forever, the photo comes with a "self-destruct" time limit à la Mission Impossible.