Snapchat

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on November 25, 2012

We're not sure we fit into Snapchat's target demographic, because we just didn't get it. It's a social app, which means it works best when you have lots of friends who also use it. The premise is fairly simple: take a picture, scribble a quick message on it, and send it to a friend. But you also have to set a timer for how long your friend can view the picture, which is where it lost us.

Before you start, you have to create a Snapchat account by entering your e-mail address and a password. After that, you'll be asked to create a username and enter your mobile number. To find friends, Snapchat has to have access to your contacts. Again, we're probably showing our age here, because all we could think about was our privacy. But we gave it access and it couldn't find any friends who were also using the Snapchat app - not a big surprise. Still, we were able to check out the app's features.

It taps into your iPhone's camera, but adds buttons for checking feeds, snapping a picture, and accessing Twitter and Facebook. We snapped a picture and, using the pen tool, scribbled a quick message on the picture with our finger. We selected 5 seconds on the timer, because, well, we're not sure why. Maybe if you were playing some kind of a seek-and-find game? We tapped the Save button and then Send, and selected our name from the Contact list since none of our friends use the app. Sure enough, a notification appeared in our feed screen where pressing and holding down revealed our picture for -- you guessed it -- 5 seconds.

That's pretty much the extent of the app. It worked without any hitches. If you're into snapping and sending pictures to friends, and want to add a more gamelike, social aspect to it, you'll find this app worthwhile. We'll stick to just sending our pictures through text or photo streams.