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Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

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Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#211

Post by gjolund »

rigobert_slim wrote: post #198
gjolund wrote: post #131

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…

interesting that most of the comments who disagree with you actually just take issue at your calling it a "trivial application" language aside, you're hitting on an important idea that a lot of people are missing: 'trivial' doesn't mean useless, but this specific type of artistic agency and communication are unfortunately the only means of expression most have when there are no economic means of personal expression (…

I agree, snapchat is the lowest common denominator of narcissistic communication.

Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#212

Post by swombat »

petercooper wrote: post #129
argonaut wrote: post #35

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…

I'm a heavy Snapchat user and just sending stuff to a partner doesn't seem to be the main use case nowadays - it's stories (basically a video equivalent of Twitter and Instagram mushed together) or throwaway group sending.

Hey Peter. What's the point of stories? Seems like a more limited version of Twitter - you can post photos and videos on twitter too... and there you have 21k followers. Surely a better place to post stuff if you want to reach an audience?

Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#213

Post by canttestthis »

gjolund wrote: post #205
qq66 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If snapchat shutdown tomorrow would anyone actually care, or would they immediately shift to the next best platform? You can say this about a lot of great companies. Toyota shuts down tomorrow, I buy a Honda instead. Sure, I wanted the Toyota, but I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. UPS shuts down tomorrow, I use FedEx. Apple shuts down, I use Android. Starbucks shuts down, I go to Peet's.

Those companies employ hundreds of thousands of people and entire supply chains. Snapchat employ's next to no one in comparison and is worth more than entire industries.

You're good at moving the goalposts in a debate.

Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#214

Post by gjolund »

nostrademons wrote: post #170
gjolund wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I said, I am glad that those people have a sandbox to "interact" in. Do you honestly think that sandbox is worth $20b?

I think it's worth more, honestly. Probably $100-200B. 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…

Are you honestly suggesting that a company with fewer than 200 employees is worth more than:

* GM * Ford * Honda

Combined. That is ridiculous and just highlights how big a bubble is brewing in SV.

We value a couple hundred million fickle users more than hundreds of thousands of actual employees, physical factories, and entire supply chain industries.

Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#215

Post by argonaut »

milesokeefe wrote: post #84
argonaut wrote: post #35

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…

Perhaps it doesn't scale well, but their sponsored face filters seem to be getting a good reception. It's rare for people to find ads fun.

Yeah but I seriously doubt that will drive them to $1B in revenue. They need one big cash cow rather than a collection of trinkets.

Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#216

Post by gjolund »

MichaelGG wrote: post #203
gjolund wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly are people communicating? If snapchat shutdown tomorrow would anyone actually care, or would they immediately shift to the next best platform? Compared to say a public utility, car manufacturer, global shipping company, etc. There are real problems in the world, and snapchat doesn't solve any of them. There are real companies trying to solve these problems, and snapchat is worth more than most of them. O…

What problem is HBO solving, other than entertaining people? How is Snapchat any different? At a minimum, it's entertaining. At best it's "connecting people" and so on.

I love that you hand wave "connecting people".

These people are already connected, they can communicate on Twitter, FB, SMS, email, phone, skype, gchat, facetime, whatsapp, line, vine, periscope etc etc.

Snapchat is just the current prom queen. Everyone wants to be her date, but in 10 years she will be working at Dairy Queen.

Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#217

Post by spotman »

gjolund wrote: post #131

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…

Sometimes though, the scale of these things is enough to make programming (and operations if your into that) completely exhilarating.

Things that seem extremely trivial, like chat, or the ability to upload photos, become quite an engineering feet when your measuring the amount of photos uploaded at terabytes per hour or more.

Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#218

Post by MicroBerto »

askafriend wrote: post #171
gjolund wrote: post #131

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…

Do you think making movies is "trivial" and not solving a "real problem"? I don't think making movies is trivial. It has a large effect on culture and really at the end of the day, as humans, all we have that's uniquely ours is culture (for various broad definitions of the term). Think about how much Sci-Fi movies, novels, and similar ideas contributed to our drive to go to the moon - as a society, not just a country…

Your points all well taken, I consider any talented employee at SnapChat to be doing this world a net disservice due to the wasted opportunity costs of other issues they could be attacking.

"We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters."

Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#219

Post by gjolund »

spotman wrote: post #217
gjolund wrote: post #131

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…

Sometimes though, the scale of these things is enough to make programming (and operations if your into that) completely exhilarating. Things that seem extremely trivial, like chat, or the ability to upload photos, become quite an engineering feet when your measuring the amount of photos uploaded at terabytes per hour or more.

Snapchat runs on Google infrastructure, and brags about having 0 devops employees.

Scale these days is a solved problem, there is nothing they are doing scale wise that I can't do in a couple weeks using AWS.

AWS Lambda functions make on demand filters and photo editing trivial. It is one of their demo functions.

Re: Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

#220

Post by az0xff »

swombat wrote: post #212
petercooper wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a heavy Snapchat user and just sending stuff to a partner doesn't seem to be the main use case nowadays - it's stories (basically a video equivalent of Twitter and Instagram mushed together) or throwaway group sending.

Hey Peter. What's the point of stories? Seems like a more limited version of Twitter - you can post photos and videos on twitter too... and there you have 21k followers. Surely a better place to post stuff if you want to reach an audience?

It's mostly about the user experience of the follower, I think (more than the fact that the stories go away after 24 hours).

Snapchat allows a follower to consume all of the stories that they follow in a single stream. You only have to tap quickly to go to the next media item. One can also skip one story and move on to the next with a single swipe.

The fact that everything has to be a direct photo or video from a phone also makes every story feel less manufactured and more genuine. For example, I can go to an NBA player's Twitter account and find that personal tweets and messages from their sponsors are completely mixed in a single feed, while their Snapchat feed is all about their day-to-day personal life (which some find much more interesting).

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