Snapchat is known for popularizing the idea of the self-destructing photo, but did you know that long before Snapchat existed, Polaroid had already offered its own line of self-destructing Polaroid pictures? It was called the Fade to Black line.
Instagram took another big step this week in competing more directly with Snapchat. The Facebook-owned company has launched live video and disappearing photos.
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.
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.
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.
Last week we ran a story about temporary photo and video sharing app Snapchat's recent explosion onto the market and how, sexting jokes aside, venture capitalists the world over are clawing to get a piece of the action. A few days later we found out that Facebook was about to rain all over Snapchat's parade by using Snapchat's idea to create its own app.
Today, that second story came true, as Facebook has just introduced the all-new 'Poke' app -- a photo, text, and video sharing application, complete with the same 10 second maximum time limit made famous by Snapchat.