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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

#41

Post by prklmn »

username223 wrote: post #37
trts wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

~$520 billion as of Friday. Aside from international expansion, the difference between Facebook and MySpace is that Facebook has made and will in all likelihood continue to make a lot of money, actual profit measurable with GAAP. Snapchat will die before it makes GAAP $1, just as MySpace did.

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

#42

Post by this_user »

doublerebel wrote: post #10

I still think Snap is a good long play because so far they are the only social network to "get" Augmented Reality. Google has already had multiple AR missteps (Glass, Tango, Pokemon Go via Niantic), Facebook is playing AR copycat, Microsoft's AR is targeting big industry. Snap's entertainment experience puts the viewer in the center of the action, similar to VR 360° experiences and Spectacles is a direct expression o…

SNAP has already lost $40 mn on Spectacles, because they don't sell. This does not seem to be a strategy that is actually going to work. Meanwhile, Instagram Stories now has more users than Snap, and Snap's user growth has stalled, coming in below expectations for the second quarter in a row. So far they have also failed to improve their Android experience, which is not helping. At this point, SNAP seems more like TWTR than FB, except they don't have the kind of relevance, and therefore staying power, that the former has. Unless they can come up with a strategy for a turnaround, they may be dead in five years.

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

#43

Post by nikcub »

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #22

I 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'm also very optimistic about Snap - it's one of the only social networks I use regularly.

That said, Snap could fix a lot of things and grow revenue and the stock could still not move - they're at about the same market cap of Twitter with a fraction of the revenue and user growth that is similarly stalling

There seems to be a hard boundary with reaching the demographic of users in developed nations and both Snap and Twitter are there

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

#44

Post by traek »

username223 wrote: post #37
trts wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

3 billion monthly active users. They hit 2 billion this summer [1].

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/27/15880494/facebook-2-billi...

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

#45

Post by ptero »

cft wrote: post #36

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.

I do not think it is shut, but new entrants must offer something significantly better (or new and useful) than what is available from big 3. I am not sure what exactly Snaps value was beyond some funny face transforms. If nothing, it is not surprising if it fails once the novelty wears off.

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

#47

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

noncoml wrote: post #39
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…

> I am sure people wouldn't mind paying a certain amount per year to keep using the app without creepy apps.

What makes you so sure? Given that there are basically no successful social networks that charge, I'm very skeptical.

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

#48

Post by nemothekid »

noncoml wrote: post #39
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…

1. Snaps core demo likely doesn’t have the discretionary income to pay for a social network.

2. Snaps main competitor would have a far lower barrier to entry - free

3. If all your friends can’t pay for Snap, you will likely move regardless if you are a paying customer. Why would I pay for a network with 80% of my friends when I can use a near clone with 100% of my friends.

4. Facebook nearly $7/user a month with an ad model. Ads are fare more lucrative than subscriptions

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

#49

Post by anothertraveler »

I thought the sunglasses would've been a nice transition into a larger AR play, but they fumbled...and had no plan for how to compete having a product that is otherwise easy for other social networks with a larger userbase to copy.

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

#50

Post by natalyarostova »

noncoml wrote: post #39
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…

There seems to be a social convention that has formed around social media products that the user should never have to take out their credit card and actually pay. It makes sense why it started this way, since network effects are everything in this space.

But like many things that start one way for a good reason, that reason is eventually forgotten and the state of the world is codified into a shared social norm. Most people either don't care or are unfavorable to social media sites selling their info, yet I predict the outcry towards their charging would be enormous.

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