Yet, even if it fails, Snapchat will have been one of the most fascinating services to hit the Internet in years. To me, the app’s exploding popularity suggests that society is yearning for a new way to think about data. Snapchat is one of the first mainstream services to show us that our photos and texts don’t need to stick around forever: that erasing all the digital effluvia generated by our phones and computers can be just as popular a concept as saving it. Farhad Manjoo
Personally, I would prefer an Internet where things I share reach only the people I intended to share with, without having to worry that the service we’re using is recording that information to target ads or that the conversation is being scrutinized for possible threats by the NSA; an Internet where if I choose to delete something posted online it will be permanently deleted from all servers and not remain cached in a search log somewhere. But I’m not sure we’ll ever have that, the way things are going now…
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