Instant messages called "Snaps"

• Peer-to-peer
• Disappear upon viewing

© Santeri Viinamäki CC BY-SA

Instant messages called "Snaps"

• Peer-to-peer
• Disappear upon viewing

© Jamie CC BY-NC-SA

Snap stories

• Sequence of snaps


• Available to view for friends
• Available for 24 hrs

Snap Map

Snapchat by the numbers

• 190 million active daily users
• 300 million active monthly users
• 47% of US teens consider it their main social media
• More than 20k photos/videos per second

Is Snapchat of interest?

First hand information

Is Snapchat of interest?

Near real-time event detection

Goal: Understand the spatial and temporal characteristics of Snapchat

To see what kind of information can be expected

Data collection

Data collection

Before February 2018
• Mobile only app
• No open API

Snap Map available at map.snapchat.com (Feb '18)
• Can be reverse engineered
• Public snaps on map can be collected

Data collection

Data collection

• Heatmap from points corresponding to snaps
• Regenerated every ~5 mins
• Individual points visible for 24 hrs


• Scrape locations continuously
• Rebuild timeline and keep first occurence of points


• Miami, New York City and Los Angeles
• February 23 - March 3

Data collection

Results

Spatial characteristics

Prominence of downtown areas with other local clusters

Spatial characteristics

Tile size: ~ 2.4 km x 2.4 km

25% of snaps are posted in 1% of tiles

Spatial characteristics

Gi* statistics

Temporal characteristics

Snap numbers increase by 61-75% over the weekend

Temporal characteristics

Temporal characteristics

Summary

Summary

• Snapchat is used to gather first hand information
• Strong clusters in downtown and touristic areas
• Weekend activity > weekday activity
• Peak: evening and night; Least active: early morning

Future work:
• Longer period, more cities
• Compare activity to Twitter