SUBJECT: About Snapchat: Things You Didn't Know?

BODY:  

Snapchat is one of the most unusual social
networks to make it big online. You wouldnt have
thought that such a simple concept, handled
arguably quite poorly to begin with, would become
the huge behemoth it has today. And yet it has 
and right now its flying higher than ever thanks
to its 2.0 update.

Snapchats story is surprising enough on face
value but when you learn some of the more
surprising twists and turns, the plot only
thickens. Read on and lets take a closer look at
some of the things you probably didnt know about
Snapchat

The Original Snapchat App Was Badly Coded

If ever you think you cant make it big online,
let Snapchat be an inspiring story to suggest
otherwise. Snapchat is by no means some miracle
feat of coding. Rather, this was actually a
relatively poorly put together piece of code and
would sap huge amounts of battery and CPU power
when running in the background even! Thats not to
say its a bad app  only that its all the more
impressive it was able to do as well as it did.

Facebook Tried to Buy Snapchat

When it was enjoying its first major surge in
popularity, Snapchat was offered a purchase bid
from Facebook worth $3 billion. Thats a huge vote
of confidence from the biggest social network on
the planet and Snapchat turned it down!

Snapchat Can Do Whatever it Likes With Your Content

Before you think that Snapchat is a great underdog
story we can all get behind, bear in mind that it
is actually just as guilty of underhand tactics as
all the bigger players, sadly.

Specifically, Snapchat retains the right to do
whatever it wants with your content  including
publishing it on their website or selling it! The
terms of service read:

You grant Snapchat a worldwide, perpetual,
royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable
license to host, store, use, display, reproduce,
modify, adapt, edit, publish, create derivative
works from, publicly perform, broadcast,
distribute, syndicate, promote, exhibit, and
publicly display that content in any form and in
any and all media or distribution methods (now
known or later developed).

Thats pretty despicable but note that Instagram
has a very similar policy. The only difference?
Instagram never claimed to be a private messaging
service. (Facebook also has similar terms but only
for publicly displayed content so thats
something.)

There Are Ways to Circumnavigate Snapchats Core Functionality

With that in mind, perhaps youll feel less guilty
about using Snapchat in ways that were never
intended by the company. If you want to save a
photo youve taken  or that someone else has
taken  then you can simply take a screenshot on
Android devices.

Likewise, there is a hack that lets you record
video for longer than 10 seconds on iPhone. Simply
start recording your video, double tap on the home
button to enable multitasking and then the video
will carry on recording without any time
restriction in place. Way to stick it to the man!

Talk To You Soon,
[YOUR NAME]