161–170 of 337 posts
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People on tech forums are typically negative about social media apps and platforms. It's pretty interesting.
Which is ironic, because tech forums, reddit, HN, etc are "social" sites as well.
1.8B. 1,800 Million, right? Stop me when the math goes wrong. Divided into bundles of 200k: 9000x. Let's say each member of a team costs 200k/yr. High for some, low for others, whatever. 1.8B dollars is enough money for a team of OVER NINE THOUSAND people. What... exactly is taking that much effort, here? What is this money fueling? I honestly boggle to imagine.
People need to stop focusing their criticism on how stupid the app is or how they're going to lose all their users. It's almost a meme by now of how people say this every time Snapchat is brought up. By now it's a foregone conclusion, and requires active ignorance and not really caring to keep an open mind, to continue to hold onto that belief in the face of tremendous evidence that 1) Snapchat is very popular, 2) Sn…
look, I am all for giving snapchat the benefit of the doubt (or I did a long time ago) it was actully the classic zuckerberg boardroom story peter theil tells all the time, except zuckerberg was yahoo to snapchat(i think yahoo was the aquirer but IDRP). Mark Zuckerberg was a the full package, a super talented developer and shrewd business man. Maybe he was cocky, maybe he was super clever, but he doubled down on hims…
Every single person here seems negative about Snapchat. I am 30+, use it occasionally, and see more and more of my older friends signing up. Especially those friends far away from the echo chamber. This fundraising feels smart for investors who want a great return and for the company to use to get to an IPO. If you don't use Snapchat, or haven't used it in a few years, it is probably time you take a second look.
It's useful and fun to a large number of people and definitely has some non-trivial value.
Does it have enough value to justify this kind of money being plowed into it? That's where I'm not convinced. These are big numbers and for them to ever make a return the revenue growth would have to be really really huge. I can't see Snapchat becoming Google or Facebook since its interaction profile is too narrow and brief.
We're basically talking about an ad-engagement and profiling medium here.
Google has huge value as an ad platform because they serve ads at the time of maximum intent -- their ads are targeted to what you are looking for right now and so they're more likely to convert than ads served at random times.
Facebook has huge value as an ad platform because they have so much data to target ads accurately and gather metrics about who engages with them. Many people use Facebook ads not as primary ads to drive conversion but as 'probes' to develop customer profiles, so it's almost like a focus group as a service.
What monstrous value is Snapchat going to provide in this space that will generate returns higher than the S&P 500 on many billions in investment over the next, say, 10 years?
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What about snapchat is useless? Or is this just typical "damn kids these days" speak? The app is an incredible form of communication, and there is a reason people prefer it to other mediums.
What's incredible and different about it at the tune of 20 Billion USD?
People need to stop focusing their criticism on how stupid the app is or how they're going to lose all their users. It's almost a meme by now of how people say this every time Snapchat is brought up. By now it's a foregone conclusion, and requires active ignorance and not really caring to keep an open mind, to continue to hold onto that belief in the face of tremendous evidence that 1) Snapchat is very popular, 2) Sn…
look, I am all for giving snapchat the benefit of the doubt (or I did a long time ago) it was actully the classic zuckerberg boardroom story peter theil tells all the time, except zuckerberg was yahoo to snapchat(i think yahoo was the aquirer but IDRP). Mark Zuckerberg was a the full package, a super talented developer and shrewd business man. Maybe he was cocky, maybe he was super clever, but he doubled down on hims…
What makes you say that? Do you know how hard it is to get your social network to move to a new thing? The clone would have to have an amazing benefit, which Snapchat would be in a decent position to clone themselves.
The only real value of Snapchat is that now I dont have to scroll past the innane content snapchat is used for on other social networks. Im not going to say snapchat is or isnt worth $20b. I am going to say that I am sad that so much energy and money is being thrown at such a trivial application. Im a software engineer, and i like solving real problems. I cant imagine working at snapchat and trying to motivate myself…
just like beauty, utility in this case is in the eye of the beholder. countless millions of people are finding utility in sending self-destructing pictures of themselves to eachother and although it might not seem like a "real" problem, there is inherent complexity and technical challenge in providing a large-scale social service that said millions use daily. disclaimer: i don't use it.
Those guys are all millionaires now. They don't give a shit about anything but money and extracting everything they can from their users before they fizzle out and die.
The only real value of Snapchat is that now I dont have to scroll past the innane content snapchat is used for on other social networks. Im not going to say snapchat is or isnt worth $20b. I am going to say that I am sad that so much energy and money is being thrown at such a trivial application. Im a software engineer, and i like solving real problems. I cant imagine working at snapchat and trying to motivate myself…
(It's relevant if you're going to say that Snapchat Software Engineers' problems aren't "real".)
People need to stop focusing their criticism on how stupid the app is or how they're going to lose all their users. It's almost a meme by now of how people say this every time Snapchat is brought up. By now it's a foregone conclusion, and requires active ignorance and not really caring to keep an open mind, to continue to hold onto that belief in the face of tremendous evidence that 1) Snapchat is very popular, 2) Sn…
The monetization piece is interesting, because unlike FB, Snapchat has been all about privacy and anonymity from day one. Their recent ToS change makes it clear that this might not always be the case, and I'm really curious to see how their users react as they get more and more aggressive on monetization. The core functionality doesn't necessarily require the network effect to be useful, unlike Facebook, so there is…
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You have to understand, though, that most people in the world are not software engineers and interacting with their friends is one of their favorite things to do. The essence of business is solving problems that are important to other people with solutions that are interesting to you.
Like I said, I am glad that those people have a sandbox to "interact" in. Do you honestly think that sandbox is worth $20b?
That sandbox is a lot bigger than the sandbox you & I like to inhabit. The set of folks interested in technical programming & startup-related news probably numbers under 100K. I was an admin for a Harry Potter fansite in college that had 100K registered users, close to 1M when guests were counted, and we were far from the largest Harry Potter fansite. The set of folks who like clickbait, celebrity gossip, hanging out with friends, and making funny faces is a couple orders of magnitude larger than that, probably past a billion.
People are very different in their refined passions but alike in their base desires. That means that anything that caters to base desires, by definition, will have a market size much, much bigger than sites that cater to refined passions.