Snapchat has become one of the most talked about and used social media platforms over the past few months. It started out being most popular with millennials, but has gained popularity recently with Gen Xers and businesses.

While there are a lot of people who use Snapchat, not many fully understand all of its capabilities. (Some people..cough cough parents…still think its used for sexting) and that is totally not the case!

Over the next few weeks I will share a few tips that I’ve found that make the experience of the app much better.

The History: Evan Spiegel and Reggie Brown created and launched Snapchat originally as “Pictaboo” with their friend Bobby Murphy in the summer of 2011.

After Murphy left over monetary disputes, Brown and Spiegel changed the name officially to Snapchat in the fall of 2011. By the following spring, Snapchat had grown to over 100,000 users. From that moment on Snapchat began to grow into one of the most used, and interesting platforms on social media.

The Basics: Snapchat is an app where people can send pictures or videos back and forth with friends or family and after they view them the picture/video “disappears.”

Snapchat users can also:

A person’s story is much like a Facebook or Instagram feed. Meaning you can post different pictures or videos to your story and all of your followers can view it. But…there’s a catch! The pictures and videos only last for 24 hours, so you better check it regularly!

With all of these fun ways to send pictures and videos, its no wonder Snapchat generates around 9,000 snaps per second!