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Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum

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Re: Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum

#31

Post by ChuckMcM »

Basically greed was in the driver's seat.

EDIT: From the article:

Stock-underwriting activity was in the doldrums in 2016— money raised by U.S. IPOs was the lowest since 2003, according to Dealogic—and banks were hungry for fees.

And goes on to describe how they set aside all of the signs that underwriting the offering was a bad deal. (Well good for them, they would make money regardless but the retail investors would not get a clear picture of the challenges in SNAP's business model until it was too late.

This was exactly the sort of activity that defrauded retail investors in the dot com bust. "What do you mean they don't have a business model? Look here, Morgan Stanley is underwriting their offering, don't you trust these guys to know what they are doing?"

Re: Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum

#32

Post by exogeny »

ericjang wrote: post #26
exogeny wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Instagram is the current leader, with Kik, Snapchat, and Messenger in some messy run-off after.

I have to admit a lot of surprised how quickly Instagram got to parity and overtook Snapchat with my family, but I'm at least two decades out of that demographic so that's probably more of me being old and out of it than anything else!

Re: Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum

#34

Post by PretzelFisch »

econner wrote: post #17
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

Two bits which caught my attention: "[Evan Spiegel] has dismissed ideas that rely heavily on data, according to people who have worked with him. He prefers to study the experience of users for cues on revisions and new features, some of the people said. ... One banker involved in the IPO said he thought the lack of voting shares and other decisions could imperil the company’s standing with investors, possibly hurting…

The first point could be likened to the Apple vs. Google design model. Google: "Test 36 shades of blue and choose the one that performs best" Apple: "Create beautiful product based on user experience and then convince you that you like it." I don't think making all product decisions based on data is necessarily good, nor is designing in a vacuum.

It sounds more like different data set that's gathered by observation. If you can keep the observer's bias to a minimum this method may tell you more about how your feature is received and used. It is also the most time consuming and costly approach and doesn't really scale.

Re: Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum

#35

Post by arionhardison »

anilshanbhag wrote: post #23
hi5eyes wrote: post #18

Earlier 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

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,…

Most of what you said in your comment is simply not true: http://news.filehippo.com/2017/11/snapchat-drops-out-of-app-...

https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/01/instagram-whatsapp-vs-snap...

Re: Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum

#36

Post by cft »

That means that FB was probably the last "web" or "app" big IPO. Now it's Amazon, Google or Facebook. Even Yelp is withering. Just like it has been impossible to start a new car or airliner manufacturer since the 1920s (except for Tesla), the opportunity for creating new large web companies has been shut by the entrenched trio.

Re: Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum

#37

Post by username223 »

trts wrote: post #28
exogeny wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

3bn what? I still "use" it in some sense, but I mostly publish auto-syndicated stuff, and read via mbasic, which uses no JavaScript and limits their surveillance. Of course I never load their "like" buttons. My parents found it useless and stopped using it; my kids can't be bothered. How much is Myspace 2.0 worth?

Re: Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum

#38

Post by warent »

exogeny wrote: post #30

Snap 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…

Not sure it should even be given the lofty status of paradox. Would simply mark it up to a bad business model

Re: Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum

#39

Post by noncoml »

exogeny wrote: post #30

Snap 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…

> how to sell ads

Why are we so obsessed with the ads model. Why not start charging?

This is not a web app, where you have to take out your wallet and enter your CC info; all it takes is the scan of your fingerprint. I am sure people wouldn't mind paying a certain amount per year to keep using the app without creepy apps.

Sure, the revenue will be capped by the amount per year a user is willing to pay, but maybe the days of the fat cows are over?

Re: Snap’s Rise and Fall: How a Big, Splashy IPO Prompted the Doubters to Keep Mum

#40

Post by BoorishBears »

warent wrote: post #38
exogeny wrote: post #30

Snap 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…

Not sure it should even be given the lofty status of paradox. Would simply mark it up to a bad business model

Snapchat doesn’t feel like a company with a business model that couldn’t be very successful, but it also doesn’t feel like there was ever a fighting chance of justifying it’s IPO evaluation
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