Williams finds safe haven on Snapchat
World No. 1 shares with fans, avoids trolls
It’s late on a Wednesday
PARIS night, the fourth day of the French Open, and Serena Williams is watching episodes of The Golden Girls before bed.
Williams does this often as an escape-from-the-world method during the all-encompassing demands of a major tennis tournament. She documents most of her Golden Girls- watching on Snapchat, the social media app that is growing in popularity among celebrities, athletes and brands.
Williams, who beat Teliana Pereira 6-2, 6-1 on Thursday to advance to the third round, adores the app, particularly for its oneway traffic flow. She posts a video or photo (properly filtered and/or drawn on, as the app allows users to do), and that’s that. There’s no feedback, no comments, no one to tell her if they think what she did was funny, ridiculous or downright silly.
There’s no list of people responding to her post. It’s just out there.
“I don’t have to deal with the really mean trolls out there and the comments” on other apps, she says. “I don’t read comments (on other social media channels), but then there is always some that kind of pop up. I don’t have to be judged, at least, you know, on Snapchat. I don’t have to be judged about whatever.”
There is plenty to judge: Williams is at her unfiltered height on an app known for its filters. She gave followers a tour of her swanky Parisian flat (“I wanted a big, open kitchen,” she says behind the camera) and took them to a pedicure.
She posts constantly: practicing; walking through the mall; cooking a chicken in her kitchen.
Williams daily posts videos of herself using the app’s filters, which can include a cat face or bouquet of flowers over her head or an X-Men theme or a contorted facial shape.
“I hate cats,” she says, whiskers digitally imposed over her lips, cat ears atop her head. “But this is my favorite filter.”
Tennis players — and professional athletes — continue to be managed by their teams of agents, publicists and personal assistants. Social media accounts have become targets for sponsors and events, filled with brand-appropriate messages and curated, stylized images.
Williams has never been one to oversaturate her channels with sponsor content (though there is plenty of that, too), but Snapchat is where she seems most comfortable, connecting with fans but secure from the disparaging remarks that have become so common elsewhere online.
“I haven’t really seen her Snapchats,” says her sister, Venus Williams, who makes cameos in Serena’s posts but only as a passerby. “Once I hear about them, they’re gone. You have to be in the know quickly. It’s hard for me to keep up with it.”
What Venus means is that Snapchat posts stay live for only 24 hours, meaning when Serena posts a public image or video to her Snapchat “story,” followers can see it only for the next day and then it disappears.
It’s not just Serena Williams who is using the app to connect with her fans in tennis. Stan Wawrinka, the defending men’s champion, is on it, and the app gave him his own filter, one of few public figures to be awarded such an honor.
“I think it’s a good way to communicate with your fans,” says Wawrinka, who took a selfie on Court Philippe Chatrier after his opening win, posting it later to the app. “It’s so easy. You can give a lot without saying too much about yourself, and that’s what I’ll try.”
“I’m obsessed with the filters,” Serena Williams says, laughing. “That’s my favorite part, the filters.”
After her first-round win, British player Heather Watson stayed in the main press room for a Snapchat video on the official Roland Garros account.
She chose the bouquet of flowers over her head as her filter, sending a thank-you message to fans.
“I just have a personal Snapchat right now,” Watson says. “Maybe I’ll have a fan-oriented one in the future.”
Snapchat can make some accounts “official stories” — like they have with Serena and Wawrinka — meaning users can more easily find their posts in what can be a hard-to-navigate interface for first-time users.
“I didn’t think Snapchat was going to be something that was going to stick around too much,” Milos Raonic says.
This week Raonic, the world No. 9, joined the app at the urging of his girlfriend, model Danielle Knudson.
“From a logical standpoint, it’s probably the social media (app) that has the most interaction and people actually pay the most attention to,” Raonic says.
Raonic, who has a polished image in interviews and on social media, thought this was the place he could loosen up, be goofy.
“I think I could do a more lighthearted version of what I tend to do in general” on social media, he adds. “We’ll see how it goes. Hopefully it doesn’t get me in trouble.”