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Snap Inc. Third Quarter 2017 Results

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Re: Snap Inc. Third Quarter 2017 Results

#121

Post by sitepodmatt »

dingo_bat wrote: post #94

Snapchat needs to cut 60% of their workforce and then relentlessly focus on the iOS platform. Make a better spectacles and make it work only on iPhone. Let the Android app languish. This is the only way to long term success. This way they maintain exclusivity and also able to polish the app much better. For example the shit transferring experience on spectacles can be easily fixed if they optimise it for iPhone. And…

You mean like the roaring success FaceTime is in the messaging space? And how .pages beat out PDFs?

Re: Snap Inc. Third Quarter 2017 Results

#122

Post by zitterbewegung »

azinman2 wrote: post #69

“Excess inventory and related charges – In Q3 2017, we recorded $39.9 million of charges related to Spectacles inventory, primarily related to excess inventory reserves and inventory purchase commitment cancellation charges.“ Looks like spectacles was a failure.

I never saw anyone on the street with Spectacles and that signals to me it is a failure. I find this rule works for portable consumer electronics.

Re: Snap Inc. Third Quarter 2017 Results

#123

Post by siddharthdeswal »

lefstathiou wrote: post #76
Devolver wrote: post #46

Snap went from an incredible growth rate to a terrible growth rate because of a few simple (and sadly, quite common) strategic mistakes: 1. Underestimating the competition. Evan Spiegel clearly believed that Zuckerberg would never figure out how to beat him. He seems to have concluded that he was smarter, more creative, and more agile than Zuck. He profoundly miscalculated Zuck's relentlessness and is now losing badl…

I am fascinated by Facebook. It is one of the most valuable companies in the world but if you took it away from me (and I would argue most people) tomorrow morning it would have almost no impact on our day to day lives. I actively use it and my girlfriend is obsessed with Instagram but if she didnt have it she would just go back to reading blogs on Tumblr or wherever. I would hate to live in a world without Google or…

I could agree with you even more than what I already do.

My social life is on WhatsApp groups. No one in my social circle uses Facebook Messenger for anything relevant. The number of friends' photos has steadily gone down over the years. I've switched off FB but come back when am bored and want to spend time looking at cat photos and BuzzFeed. Facebook not existing in the world would impact me minimally.

Google, and even Microsoft, on the other hand, damn if they stopped existing... I'd be fairly distressed I suppose.

Re: Snap Inc. Third Quarter 2017 Results

#124

Post by rock_hard »

gdulli wrote: post #110
rock_hard wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally couldn’t disagree more. If you cut me off tomorrow of Facebook and Messeneger I would instantly loose contact to the majority of people I care about (except my wife and parents). I would end up spending life on my couch watching Netflix instead of engaging in a rich social life I have now thanks to FB events, groups, Messeneger, etc. And I guarantee you that’s true for a large amount of the user base! Ot…

People had social lives before Facebook. (source: I'm old enough to remember.)

Oh, I am old enough (40) to remember too...I am in fact old enough to know that I am much better of with FB in my life...minor annoyances asides (but no product is perfect in the end)

Re: Snap Inc. Third Quarter 2017 Results

#125

Post by janus3030 »

crunkykd wrote: post #116
minikomi wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you speculating or have you seen this clearly? Personally, any way you frame it, it comes down to a lack of focus; failing to act before the lens of public opinion shifted.

Eye see what you're looking at, their vision has blurred, and putting on blinders or rose-colored glasses won't alter that view.

putting on blinders or rose-colored glasses will change the color scheme

Re: Snap Inc. Third Quarter 2017 Results

#126

Post by scurvy »

jjcm wrote: post #119
kalessin wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost is definitely bandwidth, Snapchat doesn't have much of a storage problem as snaps have an actual TTL.

Assuming half of it is bandwidth costs, that means that a daily active user is using ~380 MB/day (assuming $0.01/GB). That seems pretty hefty as an average. Especially if you consider the encoding snapchat uses puts each 10s video at about 1MB in size. 380MB is a little over an hour of snapchat quality video, that seems excessive as an average. If I were a major stockholder I'd be pushing to see why these hosting cos…

CDN? Cross-region replication? DB replication/failsafe/backups? No idea, just spitballing.

Re: Snap Inc. Third Quarter 2017 Results

#127

Post by reissbaker »

schwede wrote: post #111
DrJid wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he was being punny, but given you use the word "spec-culating" Perhaps, you are being punny too. I can't tell anymore

Are you speculating or have you seen this clearly? Personally, any way you frame it, it comes down to a lack of focus; failing to act before the lens of public opinion shifted. speculating frame focus lens Did I miss any?

"have you seen this clearly" :)

Re: Snap Inc. Third Quarter 2017 Results

#128

Post by scurvy »

spyspy wrote: post #45
jondubois wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- They lost $3 Billion in 9 months. - For every $6 they spent, they got back $1 in revenue. - The product is an app which is free to use. - A large chunk of their system runs on Google App Engine; which is probably the most expensive and highest lock-in infrastructure solution that you could possibly use. - The CEO, who was basically fresh out of university, turned down a $4 Billion offer buy the company. So basicall…

> most expensive Not really. Like any hosting platform, if you know how to tune it properly costs can be kept low. We cut our infra costs in half moving to GAE. YMMV.

They're already in Google Cloud. One could argue that's preventing them from keeping costs low. Google Cloud is tremendously expensive in op-ex at Snap's scale. You're paying Google instead of having a good ops team(s).

Dropbox did the math and found they could do better on their own. Only time will tell who is right.

Re: Snap Inc. Third Quarter 2017 Results

#129

Post by dingo_bat »

sitepodmatt wrote: post #121
dingo_bat wrote: post #94

Snapchat needs to cut 60% of their workforce and then relentlessly focus on the iOS platform. Make a better spectacles and make it work only on iPhone. Let the Android app languish. This is the only way to long term success. This way they maintain exclusivity and also able to polish the app much better. For example the shit transferring experience on spectacles can be easily fixed if they optimise it for iPhone. And…

You mean like the roaring success FaceTime is in the messaging space? And how .pages beat out PDFs?

Facetime is a failure? I don't know about pages so I guess you're right about that.

Re: Snap Inc. Third Quarter 2017 Results

#130

Post by apoverton »

liquidise wrote: post #21

> Hosting costs per DAU were $0.68 in Q3 2017 as compared to $0.64 in Q3 2016 and $0.61 in Q2 2017. Those are staggering figures to me and the trend is equally surprising. Maybe it's ignorance about hosting costs at such a scale, but i feel like cost/DAU should be declining over time, right? Is there something i'm missing here?

That stuck out to me as well. It kind of seems to me like they’re saying variable cost of goods sold increased
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