" Fred Wilson once said that the cardinal rule of social networks is that one percent of people create content and 90 percent of people consume it," says Flynn, "and we want to flip that on its head." Snapchat proved that people would share more if their messages disappeared, and if they felt unhindered and candid. "It’s more along lines of a feed or stream of content because of that pay-to-play mechanic." The bigger idea, says Flynn, is to turn every user into a creator that posts more than they might on Facebook - because "unlocking" your friends’ posts requires you to post back.
"We don’t see this as a messaging app," says Flynn. The app feels far more like a News Feed with push notifications than anything else - except this News Feed requires you to share a post before you can view it, so there’s no place for lurkers. Thus, shots feel less urgent than messages, since there’s no expectation that you’ll be able to open them immediately. If you tap on a new notification, "Shot from Adam," you won’t be able to view it - until you send a shot of what you’re doing back to Adam. Facebook tells me that in their testing of the app in a much larger group, they might receive dozens of Slingshot notifications per hour.īut because you have to respond to a shot before you can see it, these notifications act as nags instead of notifiers. In my experience testing Slingshot this past weekend, I’ve received a ton of notifications. If you give users the ability to select all, they’ll do it all the time, which potentially lessens the importance of every push notification you get. Snapchat has been adamant about leaving out the much-requested feature, and for a good reason. Slingshot’s killer feature is its Select All button, a button Snapchat diehards have begged for that lets you send a photo to all of your friends at once. Slingshot does let you send a shot to just one person, but the app doesn’t really encourage it.
But perhaps Slingshot isn’t the "messaging" app we all expected it to be. Slingshot is a new and strange example of a messaging app that raises barriers instead of tearing them down, and increases the friction to viewing a friend’s photo instead of reducing it. It’s frustrating, not exciting when a friend sends you a shot and you can’t immediately view it. The "pay to play" mechanic is difficult to wrap your head around.
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