So as some of you may have seen there was a featured snapchat story about Houston Champs today on snapchat(obviously). i was wondering if you guys thought that it was a positive representation of first and/or good publicity.
Personally, I thought that it was a pretty fair representation, although I do wish they sent someone with a little bit more knowledge of FRC to host/narrate/whatever the story.
Can you share more details for us that are not in Houston?
You can now search stories, so if you search FIRST Championship, you can find it.
You can see the FIRST Huston snap story from anywhere! I could be mis-understanding your request.
Let me update my request, can you share details for those of us not on snapchat?
You don’t need to be in houston, just swipe right on snapchat and it should be in the featured stories near the bottom.
They only highlight the dorky side of FIRST and not any of the coolrobots or things that would inspire you. I had friends outside FIRST sending me texts making fun of it. This is the kind of image that keeps fringe participants from becoming engaged.
I just watched it and I wouldn’t really say it was overly dorky, but most of the clips were extremely quick and there were a lot more videos of people than robots. There was not enough information for someone outside FIRST to really understand what was going on.
Watching it right now, so you don’t need to be in Houston. Actually very good. No battlebots references (although there was a lot of focus on ROBOT vs ROBOT).
I thought it was fine. Not my ideal depiction, but not bad. By the end at least, the commentator seemed relatively knowledgeable and included a video titled “1678 and 118 filling up the boiler.”
I don’t think I’ve watched a Snapchat feature before now though. Is this a big thing?
If I’m not mistaken, Snapchat has more active users than Twitter. So yeah, it’s big. As for how many people actually look at the Discover stories, Snapchat keeps pretty silent about those numbers. My concern is more how FIRST is being portrayed, being on Snapchat Discover. Frankly, the rest of the content on Snapchat Discover is the lowest of the low in terms of quality or honesty. I love that FIRST is working hard to get bigger media exposure with young people, but I’m not stoked about the company this media exposure puts us in.
By the way, I can’t actually see the story on my phone. So I have no idea if it’s there or not. Anyone have pictures of the story or anything?
EDIT - So I watched it on a friend’s phone. I’m not sure why it doesn’t show up on my Snapchat, but all in all, I’m happy with it. I think the first snippets weren’t as interesting or as good a representation as the later bits, but overall I’m happy with the representation.
Users can also submit to the story-I submitted the bit with 1678 and 118 shooting in the boiler. According to snapchat it’s been viewed 117,000 times so far, so it is making it LOUD fairly well
Do you think its wise to have your multi million dollar organization represented by snapchats submitted by high school students?
I don’t really like this feature. I’m glad FIRST was recognized to be featured here but I can’t help feeling as though the whole thing was very cringy. It doesn’t show too much of actual match footage and instead shows some admittedly very nerdy content which really isn’t what FIRST is about. It’s kind of a similar problem to the theming being a bit cringy to many.
They do screen submissions-it’s not an automatic thing. Also I’m sure FIRST and Snapchat have signed a very detailed MOU/guidelines
The snapchats must be approved manually, not everything makes it on there. Also, much larger organization (the NBA for example) do it as well. see this for example.
I was hoping to see snaps of someone who could explain what was happening, how the match goes, how autonomous works, etc. The closest I remember was first a snap of someone stumbling to explain the rules in ten seconds. Then what seemed to be an outside viewer trying to explain what the robots did with fuel and gears but they didn’t really understand what robots do with gears. I can imagine that would be confusing to non-FIRSTers watching these snaps, just seeing a very stereotypical cringy look at robotics kids.
This was a good try at getting a representation of FIRST in a new-age platform but I wish it would have been done better.
It wasn’t the best depiction of FIRST, but its a step forward in the right direction. This is a great platform to get exposure on.
I love snapchat, and I love FIRST, but this story was not too great at showing it off. The rules need to be in common terms. Don’t call the fuel “fuel”, call them whiffle balls, what they are, and say they go into a goal, not a “boiler”. No one knows these terms except the FIRST community. The goal of being on a popular social media is to get out of that community and reach into the greater community. I hope St. Louis has one and that they do a better job.
inb4 theme war!