Are you up to date?

Snapchat is classed as a social network, in the beginning is was a picture oriented app, where you would send photos instantly to people for a maximum of 10 seconds. You were able to add a line of text or write on the photo to communicate with the receiver. Since its popularity increased it continued to have updates and allowed the consumer to do more things, it allowed you to put filters on your photo, by swiping right, being able to send longer messages and chat to your 'snapchat friends' and the general layout improved to make it easier to use. 

But the most recent update introduced new elements and sort of re-invented the app. 

1) Before you were able to see all your friends and see their best friends, however now you just see the people who have stories that day, it doesn't show all your contact unless you go on the chat aspects of the app.  There is also a 'discover' page which is filled with 12 different places you can visit from CNN to Cosmopolitan.  

2) When you click on snapchat you are presented with the camera screen, here you can see how many snaps you have, have many pending stories there are and your information. There is a new interactive element to this page and if you want to add someone on snapchat all you have to do is hold their

ghost over yours and it will add them to your contacts/friends list. A pretty quick and handy tool rather than searching their username, added them and waiting for them to accept. 

3) As I have written about before convergence is about the flow of media across multiple media platforms, but i never thought about convergence of media on one device. Now emojis (emoticons) that were used generally for texting are now used on snapchat, instead of just listing your top 3 friends you have 5 different symbols next to some of your contacts:

💛(Yellow Heart) = You are number 1 best friends with each other, they send you the most snaps and you to them too.
😁 (Grimacing Face) =Your number 1 best friend i also their number 1 best friend too.  

😊 (Blush/ Smily face)  = A best friend

😎(Sunglasses face) = One of your best friends is one of their best friends

😏 (Smirk Face)= You are one of there best friends but they are not one of yours.

5🔥 (Fire) = You have had a 'snap streak' for a certain number of days. 

These show how apps are changing to keep up with the latest develops, especially since most of my phone apps are set for automatic updates so sometimes I don't know unless they are drastic changes like this. I first found out what each emoji means through friend, but if you just Google 'snapchat emojis' the meanings come straight up. The thing with updates is they stay new for about a week when everyone is still figuring it all out and check out the new stuff they can do, then after that it becomes old. They start to forget what it was like before the update as they are used to the new thing, This could be either because we are obsessed with new media and technology or that we are now quick learners because it is so second nature to us now.