This message will self-destruct

Given that digital privacy is increasingly blatantly violated by official agencies, apps with higher privacy controls will become even more popular

In the 1990s, Nokia started using teenagers and pre-teens as beta testers for new handsets and features. This put it ahead of the curve in terms of understanding user mindsets. The Finns were the first to realise that texting was potentially huge. Adults found texting rude, ungrammatical and irritating (we're talking alphanumeric pads with no predictive text), but it was the most popular feature for kids. Similarly, mobile instant messaging was adopted by teens long before it caught on in adult circles. Ditto for Instagram, mobile social media, multimedia messaging, games, etc.

Snapchat is a new feature that's already big in youth circles and it seems set to become the next phenomenon. The concept is counter-intuitive at first. A Snapchat or snappie is a message with an image or a video clip preset to delete upon being viewed. The self-delete time can also be preset. For example, X sends a snappie to Y and sets it to delete, say, 10 seconds after being opened on Y's screen. After that, the message will not show up on phone logs and cannot be retrieved normally. If the recipient, Y, takes a screenshot to preserve the snappie, the sender, X, receives an alert saying that a screenshot has been taken and the snappie preserved.

The message is not actually deleted. A snappie can be retrieved (or permanently deleted) if the recipient is geeky enough to root the smartphone on which it's been received and look for the relevant storage folders. Also, Apple's latest iOS bypasses the screenshot alert. So, a new iPhone could store snappies without letting the sender know. A forensic examination of an unrooted smartphone will also retrieve undeleted snappies, and anybody with access to the network can pull the content. So it's not much use against snooping by government agencies.

However, Snapchat does offer a layer of protection against embarrassing messages being seen by unintended people. It also provides some degree of protection against the message being used by the recipient against the sender in an attempted blackmail. This makes Snapchat an enabler for two key categories of messages. One is the confidential communication to an office colleague saying, for example, "The boss is being a jerk" or "Let's goof off and get wasted". The other is the sext - that is, a message containing images or clips with sexually suggestive or outright pornographic content. The teen who wishes to guard against intrusive parents, or the married individual conducting an affair, would very quickly understand the utility of this feature.

The odd thing is when Stanford student Evan Spiegel presented the idea in a 2011 college project, his peers didn't instantly hail the concept of a self-destructing message service. Regardless, Mr Spiegel raised funding and dropped out of college in order to launch it.

Snapchat started with an iPhone app and then an Android app. There is now an "unofficial" client, Swapchat for Windows Phone, as well. Snapchat has no revenue model yet. But it had no trouble raising $60 million at a valuation of $800 million. The service generates over 200 million messages a day, which is truly impressive in comparison with Instagram's 40 million. The user demographic is largely under 25. There could be regulatory issues soon since many of the users are under the age of consent. Snapchat has put together a crippled version called Snapkidz for under-13s. But this is easily bypassed since the user just has to lie about age.

Facebook is also entering the self-destruct act. The new Facebook Poke app for iPhone allows the sending of content with a self-delete timer - in this case, the content cannot be retrieved by either the sender or the recipient.

The behavioural dynamics are fascinating. Given that digital privacy is increasingly blatantly violated by official agencies around the world, similar apps with higher privacy controls will become even more popular. There are kids out there already looking for ways to do this.