Every day, more than 345 million people use Snapchat. Sending photos and short video clips to someone's Snapchat friends list is an enjoyable pastime that millions engage in every day. Over the recent pandemic, Snapchat friends list surfing often stood in for personal visits that were difficult or, early on, impossible during the days before tests were widely available.
The quickest way to network more friends on other social media platforms is for a user to surf their friends list and find mutual friends. This is particularly effective on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, which have large, well-connected catalogs of users. Snapchat is not as familiar to most people as these three global giants.
It is still a very familiar and useful tool for people's cell phones and other mobile devices.
Snapchat, which started in 2011, is an a social network based on quick content. People on snapchat are often curious about how someone's friend list is built. The comprehensive friends feature of Snapchat and other social media is a good way to find and add friends.
A Short History of Snapchat
Snapchat development started in early 2011 as a project called Picaboo. Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown created it as an app that could send photos that would disappear after a set time. Forming Snap, Inc. on September 16, 2011, the app went live the same day. The Snapchat app is an Editor's Choice app on the iPhone and Google Play app stores.
When Snapchat Started
Snapchat initially allowed users to share only messages that lasted a few seconds. Users can send short text, video, and photo messages to snapchat accounts on the app through their friend list. By sending group messages, users have the power to communicate their lives, not just, in the words of Evan Spiegel, the parts that are pretty and perfect.
Picaboo to Snapchat: Problems and solutions
An early problem in the app's history, while it was still Picaboo, was the fact that while the messages were ephemeral, other users could take advantage of the iPhone's screenshot functionality to take a picture of text and photos, fixing those images in time. The workaround was to send a message alerting users that someone had taken a screenshot.
When You Look At Your Friends List
The friend list is one of the most important features of social media. Along with the wall or timeline, a friends list is what makes social media social. Being able to access someone's friends list is a key part of social networking: Being given the access to talk to snapchat friends who you would otherwise not have met.
Dangers of filling your friends list
When a friends list fills up with people you don't know personally, though, it can create problems. Measuring social media success by how many friends you have on the platform, even if you never chat with those friends, can be a trap. A friends list is sometimes seen by a user as a measure of their social media success.
Someone's snapchat friends list, however, is nothing more than a list of people they interact with on the platform. It doesn't do to compare it to someone else's friends list, because what really matters for your Snapchat account, more than anything, is not someone's friends but their best friends.
How Your Snapchat Account Is Different From Other Social Media
Snapchat is based on quick, ephemeral interactions. Like a real discussion with friends, snapchat friends discussions happen quick and then the images and words vanish into memory. All these privacy settings on Snapchat are based on enforcing that quick-flow style of chatty communication.
Anatomy of a Friend Request
When you add friends to your snapchat friends list, you will be connected immediately to that person's friend list. Even before the friend request is confirmed, you can see someone's snapchat friends list, except for users who are private.
Snapchat friends requests are handled much like friends requests on any other social media app. People send a request and it's either accepted or denied. Mutual friends are
a quick way to see someone's snapchat friends.
New friends on Snapchat are put into a list to help users manage their friends more effectively. If a spammer or scammer gets into someone's friends on Snapchat, it's easy enough to go back and find them and remove them. This helps manage a person's profile more effectively.
How To See Someone's Snapchat Friends
With all this group and individual communication, and the slightly different features that are found on Snapchat versus other social media networks, the question will naturally come up, "How can you let snapchat work to expand your social networking?"
Depending on people's privacy settings, you can see other people's posts and friendships, their snaps, and their profile information.
A person's privacy settings are their best opportunity to control how their account is perceived. Taking care about how you share your story publicly is a huge part of the responsibility of social media.
Snapchat helps this by encrypting images and videos, making them disappear quickly, and defaulting to holding information like friends lists private unless they're made public. This makes caution easier since everything is more private than on networks like Facebook or Instagram.
Steps to View Someone's Snapchat Friends List
Make Some Friends
This is the most obvious part of viewing someone else's Snapchat friends list. Snapchat takes privacy seriously. Unlike many other social media networks, it's impossible to view another person's friends on Snapchat without being friends with them first.
If you're not connected to someone but they're in the contacts list that you import from another social media or your phone, then they are visible.
Open Your Friends List And View A Friend
Once your friends list has some friends, you can simply open up your friends list by tapping on the appropriate link, then tapping again on a friend. If your friend has enabled viewing friends lists, you can click through to their friends list.
Search To Your Friend's Friends List
If your friend has their friends list searchable, you will be able to view it. However, friends lists are hidden on Snapchat by default.
Best Friends, BFFs and Super BFFs on Snapchat
When on Snapchat, a best friend is a person who you send the most chats and Snaps to. A best friend will appear higher on your homepage than others. It will be easier to send more snaps to people on your best friends list than to people who are on your ordinary friends list.
What is a Best Friend? A BFF or Super BFF?
A best friend on Snapchat is someone that you select to see your snaps higher on their home page than others. Each Snapchat user can only have a maximum of eight best friends.
BFFs and Super BFFs are people on Snapchat who are in your best friends list, who you also interact with every day. Your best friends and super BFFs are a great way to judge how often and how effectively you're using your friend list. BFFs are made by messaging a best friend two or more days in a row, and Super BFFs by maintaining that messaging streak for two weeks or longer. You will receive warnings when you're about to lose a streak.
Can You Keep Your Snapchat Account From Showing Up?
Keeping your profile private will keep others from being able to randomly search your snapchat account and viewing your account activities. Keeping your friends list private will keep other accounts from viewing you from surfing your friends.
When you show up on other people's friends list, you can make a friend that you didn't know you didn't have. Sometimes that's not how you want to interact on social media. Make decisions based on your needs. Encrypting data and keeping your account private and your friends circle contained. Snapchat gives you many tools to protect yourself from public exposure.
In Conclusion
Snapchat is a distinct social media platform with some important differences from other platforms. It's important to remember that these are not the only differences between your Snapchat account and your account on any other social media app.
This friends list based app, like many others on social media, is ultimately about creating shared data that can be examined. So a little healthy caution is always useful in using Snapchat. Other people's activities are ultimately their own. Social media users, on Snapchat or any other app, should be aware of what they share with other people. Even Snapchat still gives others a curated view of life.
Sources Cited:
https://www.pcwebopaedia.com/laptops/info/how-to-see-someones-friends-on-snapchat/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapchat