EPISODE 66 – CRYPTOCURRENCY 101, SNAPCHAT LENS STUDIO, AND THE CONTINUING BATTLE FOR NET NEUTRALITY

This week our hosts Rai, Kyle, and Min talk about the rise of cryptocurrency, the new Snapchat Lens Studio and the fate of Net Neutrality going forward into 2018. Our hard-working hosts are taking a bit of a break for the holidays, but be sure to check back on January 8 for a brand-new episode of the Digital Natives Podcast!

Cryptocurrency 101 [2:09]
Snapchat Lens Studio [9:00]
Net Neutrality [13:42]

Cryptocurrency 101

Bitcoin’s price has exploded in recent weeks and with that, we’ve been hearing a lot of questions about cryptocurrency from people that are just becoming aware of its existence. Rai gives us a crash course in what cryptocurrency is and why it’s becoming such a hot topic in the digital world.

“At any given time there are over 700 kinds of cryptocurrency in use. They’re constantly being invented and dying out” -Rai
“Cryptocurrency transactions are irreversible. Once you start a transaction, it’s done. Not even the inventor of the currency can reverse it.” -Rai
“General awareness is a huge drawback right now. A lot of people have no idea what cryptocurrency is, and they don’t know how to use it.” -Rai
“I was reading and I came across this article about Litecoin, and the inventor came out and was like ‘not to be a party pooper, but Litecoin will go down and you will lose money.’” -Kyle
“It’s estimated that all of the Bitcoin won’t be mined until 2130 something, so it will be a while before it’s all available.” -Rai

Snapchat Lens Studio

As Snapchat prepares for its big redesign next year, they continue to innovate with new features to try to grow their audience. Min tells us about their latest release, the Snapchat Lens Studio, which allows users to create their own augmented reality lenses and share them with others.

“Now Snap is allowing users to create their own 3D animated augmented reality filters.” -Min
“You’ll have to get it on your desktop. It’s not available on mobile devices, which is a little interesting in my opinion since mobile is where their users are.” -Min
“The selfie lenses are still only available to marketers. You can only get those through Snap so you have to go through their design process and everything.” -Min
“Up until now, creating these 3d lenses was only possible through Snap, so opening this up to users through Snapchat Lens studio is a huge deal.” -Min
“They might want to have to create some kind of approval process for these filters going forward. I think that would be smart.” -Min
“The selfie filters are more valuable than these 3d filters since you can literally wear an advertisement right on your face.” -Min

Net Neutrality

As of last week, Net Neutrality is officially over due to a 3-2 vote by the FCC to repeal protections put in place back in 2015. Kyle dives a bit into the current efforts to reverse this repeal and what the consequences might look like for us Digital Natives going forward.

“This may be a total unpopular belief, but I was thinking ‘Could it really be that bad? How could this benefit me?’.” -Kyle
“If you’re just generally browsing, do you really need that high-speed internet?” -Kyle
“I can see how this repeal could potentially be very bad, but I do think a lot of it is being blown out of proportion. I don’t think that changes will be very drastic or that regular internet users will even be able to notice them. At least in the foreseeable future.” -Rai

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