If you have a teenager in your life, you’ll want to be up on Snapchat, an extremely popular photo messaging app. But it’s not a copycat of Instagram or any other photo app. With Snapchat, the photos you share with your friends and family will disappear after a set time of your determination, but no longer than 10 seconds. After that the content is deleted from the recipient’s device and from the company’s servers. The whole idea is not to let others own or manipulate or share your material.

You could just flash your pretty punim for 2 seconds, and poof! It’s gone!

Of course, teens are taking advantage of the new disappearing photo and video feature by sending nano-second transmissions of naughty pictures of themselves to others. Teens will be teens.

But that didn’t stop Taco Bell from being one of the first corporations to use the platform to promote its brand.

Taco Bell made the announcement on Twitter. “We’re on @snapchat. Username: tacobell. Add us. We’re sending all of our friends a secret announcement tomorrow! #Shhh”
(@TacoBell) May 1, 2013

Tressie Lieberman, director of social and digital for Taco Bell, says the brand has been very impressed by the response it has gotten on Snapchat. Taco Bell is using the app to reintroduce their Beefy Crunch Burrito. “Sharing that story on Snapshot is a fun way to connect with the fans that we are thrilled to have. It’s all about treating them like personal friends and not consumers.”

Life has sure changed since I was a teenager. I can’t remember any corporation wanting to be my friend.