Snapchat becomes like Facebook with the debut of Memories

As Snapchat's audience grows and matures, it has to cater to the needs of a broader audience

Snapchat was one of many apps, including Whisper, Secret and YikYak, to spring up in the wake of the revelations that the U.S. government was spying on its citizens. All of these apps played up the fact that what you posted would either be anonymous, or that it would disappear forever. There would be no digital trace that you had ever posted. 

That idea was appealing, especially to young people who don't want their ever mistake, and bad fashion choice, archived forever. As Snapchat grows, though, is has been slowly getting away from its ephemeral nature. That has meant posts that stay up for much longer than a few seconds, sometimes as long as a day, and the ability to view Snaps more than once. Things just don't always disappear quite as fast as they used to. 

On Wednesday it went even further in that direction, introducing Memories, a new way to save Snaps and Stories on Snapchat, allowing users to archive their own content. The company calls it "a personal collection of your favorite moments that lives below the Camera screen." 

Users will have the ability to create new Stories from things that they've saved, and even combine multiple Memories together. They can also send Memories to their friends, or post them to a Story, where they will be marked as being old. 

Memories won't be saved to a mobile device, but by Snapchat itself, meaning they will be saved to the company's servers. The servers are typically designed to automatically delete content after a certain period of time, except for Live Stories, which the company says it may archive.

Snapchat called the new feature "a big change for our service," and they aren't kidding. 

Becoming more like Facebook?

Snapchat was founded to be the antithesis of Facebook. Basically, the two services were meant to serve completely different functions, at least from Eval Spiegel's perspective: Facebook would be the idealized version of your life, while Snapchat would be the real version of you, one you weren't afraid to expose since it would disappear right away. 

As it grows to be more popular, though, Snapchat seems to be finding that will have to start embracing some of the aspects of the other service, if only to allow older users to feel more comfortable with it. 

Snapchat has not abandoned its ephemeral nature by any means; what gets sent will still disappear in a set amount of time. However, with the addition of Memories, the company is definitely moving more in the direction of being more like Facebook than it ever has been: as a place where a user's history can be archived, and saved on Snapchat's servers. 

The reason for this change may have to do with the changing nature of Snapchat's audience. Snapchat is growing among two important demographics: older Millennials, who are aged 25 to 34, and those 35 years-and-older.

In just three years, Snapchat has increased 660 percent among the older Millennial group, from 5 percent of smartphone users to 38 percent. Growth was nearly the same in the 35 and up group, going from 2 percent to 14 percent, a 600 percent increase. Of course, it still has its greatest penetration among younger users, with 69 percent of those aged 18 to 24 using the app on their phones. But those other two groups are starting to catch up.

It's those older users, those with families and jobs and responsibilities, who are more likely to be interested in looking back on their lives, and of putting together Stories filled with memories. They are a different use case than the 18 year old, who is still living in the moment and creating those memories. 

The fact is, Snapchat is becoming more ubiquitous. It's becoming more widely used by a broader group of users, and, rather than stick with what it has been doing, the company is doing the smart thing by catering to the needs of a wider audience. It's adapting and changing to suit the needs of the people who are using it.

Memories will be rolling out "selectively" over the next month or so, before becoming available to all users.