so whats the latest way of getting past the paywall?
Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum
21–30 of 152 posts
Re: Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum
#22I just went long on snap after saying for years it's a shitty facebook and if you like social media or online ads then you should just invest in facebook. The latest conference call was very enlightening in that it showed me how much snapchat was doing wrong and what they can do to fix it. I think there's a real opportunity here. It's one thing if snap just can't outcompete facebook, and a whole other thing if the problem is simply snap's simple and easily fixable mistakes. I believe it's the latter and I think snap will at least 2x in 2 years.
Re: Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum
#23I think Snap is doing the best pure "Social Media" experience of any service right now. Whether or not that can really be monetized without becoming another Facebook is a different story.
except snapchat has been effectively locking out and leading on android users. they're making a whole new app just to get some android users back because instagram is absolutely murdering them
Snapchat has been the number 1 social media app in US, UK, Canada and France for most of this year (above Facebook app and Instagram). Whoever says Instagram is murdering it is getting his facts wrong.
When Instagram/Facebook quotes its numbers, they are worldwide user counts. Snapchat is mainly only used in US, UK, Canada, France, Germany which have around 600 million people. This compared to India, SE Asia, Brazil, Africa where Snapchat is virtually non-existant. Users in developed countries are 10 times more valuable based on ad dollars. Hence, I find the comparison of raw user numbers to be an unfair comparison.
Re: Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum
#24I just went long on snap after saying for years it's a shitty facebook and if you like social media or online ads then you should just invest in facebook. The latest conference call was very enlightening in that it showed me how much snapchat was doing wrong and what they can do to fix it. I think there's a real opportunity here. It's one thing if snap just can't outcompete facebook, and a whole other thing if the pr…
I wish you well on your speculation.
I didn't dig into the financials all that much, or even listen to call so I'm approaching this from a place of ignorance, but I do happen to have five or six family members between the ages of 13 and 18 and all of them have unanimously reported to me that Snapchat is unequivocally over.
That's as anecdotal as it gets, but I'm also hard pressed to believe that they're all simultaneously unique. And as we've seen elsewhere in tech, once the "cool" vibe is gone (Yahoo, AOL, etc.), it's a long spiral to irrelevance.
Re: Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
except snapchat has been effectively locking out and leading on android users. they're making a whole new app just to get some android users back because instagram is absolutely murdering them
what's wrong with the current android app?
I've found that my experience with the android app has improved a lot since snapchat's earlier days. The app used to be quite buggy which may account for some "ptsd", but I haven't had any problems in quite a while.
Re: Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum
#26I just went long on snap after saying for years it's a shitty facebook and if you like social media or online ads then you should just invest in facebook. The latest conference call was very enlightening in that it showed me how much snapchat was doing wrong and what they can do to fix it. I think there's a real opportunity here. It's one thing if snap just can't outcompete facebook, and a whole other thing if the pr…
I wish you well on your speculation. I didn't dig into the financials all that much, or even listen to call so I'm approaching this from a place of ignorance, but I do happen to have five or six family members between the ages of 13 and 18 and all of them have unanimously reported to me that Snapchat is unequivocally over. That's as anecdotal as it gets, but I'm also hard pressed to believe that they're all simultane…
If you don't mind me asking, what social media are your family members using? Are their friends on that platform too?
Re: Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would $5 have been too big a barrier-to-entry for the youngest Snapchatters?
Absolutely, this new generation of kids don't want to pay for anything on the App Store. Maybe the generation of ~5 or so years ago that had a stockpile of iTunes Gift Cards from Christmas did so, but the attitude towards paid applications seems very different now, at least from what I've seen with my younger cousins.
Till they discover they can earn gift cards for app stores through Google Opinion Rewards and buy any app they want. To be fair I know a handful of adults that do this.
Re: Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum
#28I just went long on snap after saying for years it's a shitty facebook and if you like social media or online ads then you should just invest in facebook. The latest conference call was very enlightening in that it showed me how much snapchat was doing wrong and what they can do to fix it. I think there's a real opportunity here. It's one thing if snap just can't outcompete facebook, and a whole other thing if the pr…
I wish you well on your speculation. I didn't dig into the financials all that much, or even listen to call so I'm approaching this from a place of ignorance, but I do happen to have five or six family members between the ages of 13 and 18 and all of them have unanimously reported to me that Snapchat is unequivocally over. That's as anecdotal as it gets, but I'm also hard pressed to believe that they're all simultane…
I can't count the number of times I've heard from people very plugged into the industry declare that the FB exodus was underway.
If you read Hacker News and Reddit, it's obvious that Facebook is about to die. People are put off by its privacy issues, its outlandishly aggressive efforts to keep you clicking, and its culpability in tilting information and elections to shady actors.
But I'd probably make a bet than they'll reach 3bn before long.
Re: Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum
#29non-paywall: http://archive.is/mWVgE
Re: Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum
#30Snap suffers from a fundamental paradox, one that is difficult for me to imagine an easy way to solve.
They've made their bones by being a uniquely fun and social way of a certain subset of the population to share their lives without parents dipping their head in and seeing what they're doing, ala Facebook. The UI is designed to generally support this; it is confusing and messy and understandable only by someone who is innately familiar with the app, or unfamiliar with the general conventions of UX.
But what happens when that user base isn't big enough and you have to expand? What happens when you need to figure out how to sell ads in an environment when you have next to no demographic information to target against? You'd have to fundamentally change the business: algorithmic timelines, a more sensible UI, more chipping away at the anonymity - all of which will turn off their core users in droves.