Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Snapchat raised $1.8B in a Series F round

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 337 posts

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

#301

Post by ivanca »

argonaut wrote: post #215
milesokeefe wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They may learn to use those trinkets. Just imagine a button that says `Buy for $0.20 the X-Men Wolverine Mask filter` or just detecting user patterns: They detect an user mostly uses cat-faces filters, so they try to sell her cat-faces filters. Or that her snap-chats are mostly on restaurants, so they show her some restaurant ads with the same color filters she likes.

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

#302

Post by nostrademons »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #248
nostrademons wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The business model for SnapChat is the same as for TV ads (and for YouTube). Intersperse branded video advertising before the user can get to the content that they're actually seeking. TV ads is a $60-80B business. People in the 18-34 demographic (which in SnapChat's case really means the 13-29 demographic - I don't know anyone over the age of 30 that actually uses SnapChat) already spend 8x as much time on SnapChat…

It's a possibility. They can just jump apps easily in this sector as it's more ephemeral by nature. What's odds of SnapChat staying popular enough for high-profit if they start interrupting conversations with video ads and alternatives exist? I imagine something similar to when SMS limitations were bullshit but WhatApp existed.

That was what I said about Facebook when they came out (I'd been an early user of LiveJournal and AIM, a bunch of my friends were on MySpace, and I saw people migrating en masse between social platforms as they got bored with the previous one). I figured that the biggest risk to them wasn't irrelevance, it was that someone newer & hotter would come along.

Turns out I was right - much of the Instagram and SnapChat usage is coming out of the pool of attention that previously belonged to Facebook - but the cycle time seems to be ~10 years, and getting longer with each generation of social software. If the history of mass culture & mass consumerism repeats itself, eventually the cycle time will be greater than a generation - forms of social interaction for the baby boomers stayed roughly constant for their whole lifetime. At that point it's meaningless to talk about shifts to the next big thing, because we'll all be dead before they happen.

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

#303

Post by askafriend »

azinman2 wrote: post #279
HappyTypist wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean indefinitely? Are they not deleted after a certain period of time?

Effectively they are deleted just not how you might imagine -- I can't reveal more as I'm not supposed to know this ;)

They probably just batch delete them from time to time but until then do a soft delete by setting "status 0" in the DB.

I imagine that's what they do.

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

#304

Post by frankzinger »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #294
alttab wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fucking pissed me off to the max, actually. This week, they did X-Men lenses and REMOVED the face swap and picture swap features for the entire day. If I wanted to use lenses, it had to be X-Men for the whole day. What PM green-lit that shitty decision? I closed Snapchat and didn't use it for the entire day. I'm boycotting the X-Men movie out of protest.

Going a whole day without face/picture swap "pissed you off to the max"? Seems you have a pretty good life.

And this insult doesn't reflect very well on yours.

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

#305

Post by jakelarkin »

partiallypro wrote: post #298
gjolund wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone is debating the popularity of Snapchat. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said "I think there is legitimate reason to be doubtful about the appeal of these products because they have nothing to do with chatting with friends". In my opinion, when Snapchat is truly forced to monetize (such as twitter/fb after ipo) it will dillute the core product to the point that people will search for…

I think it's more probable that their value will come down from bubbling heights and someone will buy them. To me chat models aren't sustainable without it working in line with your other verticals. It's too hard to monetize. IMO no chat platform can survive without being attached to another product or service; or just a vertical that is similar. Not in the mobile age it's not. There are too many chat apps as it is.…

"Really, if I'm Twitter and want to stop my stock from tanking, I get a line of credit and buy SnapChat"

Twitter's valued at only $10 Billion. Snapchat just raised at rumored $18 Billion valuation.

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

#306

Post by feelix »

azinman2 wrote: post #279
HappyTypist wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean indefinitely? Are they not deleted after a certain period of time?

Effectively they are deleted just not how you might imagine -- I can't reveal more as I'm not supposed to know this ;)

>not how you might imagine

Then I imagine they're "deleted" off of their servers, but not before being copied to another database that they use internally which isn't attached to the original servers directly.

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

#307

Post by puranjay »

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.

Works only for a couple of verticals

I'll be darned if an insurance provider can make a filter fun

It's also something most small businesses can't really make good use of, unless they are in the entertainment/lifestyle businesses

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

#308

Post by sangnoir »

partiallypro wrote: post #298
gjolund wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone is debating the popularity of Snapchat. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said "I think there is legitimate reason to be doubtful about the appeal of these products because they have nothing to do with chatting with friends". In my opinion, when Snapchat is truly forced to monetize (such as twitter/fb after ipo) it will dillute the core product to the point that people will search for…

I think it's more probable that their value will come down from bubbling heights and someone will buy them. To me chat models aren't sustainable without it working in line with your other verticals. It's too hard to monetize. IMO no chat platform can survive without being attached to another product or service; or just a vertical that is similar. Not in the mobile age it's not. There are too many chat apps as it is.…

> IMO no chat platform can survive without being attached to another product or service;

I sincerely believe WhatsApp could have survived independently with a $1/yr subscription. They hit a sweet spot of having a 9-digit user base, a small team and not raising crazy amounts of venture capital.

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

#309

Post by collyw »

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…

The interns in our marketing department use it. I asked them to explain it to me, and they did. I still don't see the point in it. But everyone under the age of 25 does seems to see the point. And the advertising on it brings us business.

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

#310

Post by bby »

vonklaus wrote: post #76
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…

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…

as a developer who codes all day and has rarely ever talked to or seen a girl in person, what is it like to have sex once or twice yourself?
Post reply on HN