In a world where the Internet is permanent, it’s nice to think that Snapchat CEO and President, Evan Spiegel, has developed a non-permanent social media platform. In his terms, “Snapchat is a mobile, photo and video messaging software that flips the current social media process on its head.”

The traditional social media platform has a timeline or feed which stores all of your information forever, for everyone to see. Snapchat, on the other hand, is a real-time, emotionally driven chat software that deletes all messages after they are viewed. Instead of saving everything and having to delete the things you don’t want, a user’s content is deleted automatically with an option of saving things (screenshots).

Snapchat’s driving force isn’t its opposition to permanent information, Spiegel has gone on record saying there is a time and place for it. The idea that snapchats are ephemeral is propelled by its founders vision of a media-sharing platform that allows users to capture their emotions and activities as they happen, share them with friends, and rest easy knowing their information will only be seen by those whom they have shared it with.

Snapchat is genius. It’s the first major player to step up and address the problem of “permanent information.” Media, parents, and critics alike have created outroar over the perceived problem of sexting within snapchat. Spiegel has answered critics by reaffirming Snapchat’s founding views and focusing on the large majority of users who use it for other purposes. There are countless other apps that focus on “secret sharing” and “sexting,” but Spiegel believes the timing, layout, and functions of Snapchat help promote it for friendly, real-time, media-sharing, versus sexting.