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

Nobody Trusts Facebook, Twitter Is a Hot Mess, What Is Snapchat Doing?

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 190 posts

Re: Nobody Trusts Facebook, Twitter Is a Hot Mess, What Is Snapchat Doing?

#181

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

ariwilson wrote: post #91
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure Android is a shining example of freedom.

Compared to iOS? Yes it is.

yes, perhaps, and it can be made more so, but the parent post said essentially 'Android is an example of what happens when you choose freedom over stability', and I don't think Android is a good example of that. There's lots of 'different Androids' but most of the problems come down to manufacturers not quality-testing their software and the (perhaps inevitable) use of all of the proprietary bits in the mobile that third parties thus can't fix/optimise.

Re: Nobody Trusts Facebook, Twitter Is a Hot Mess, What Is Snapchat Doing?

#182

Post by Rjevski »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #180
Rjevski wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does everything need to be a family platform? A bit of an extreme example, but the adult entertainment industry seems to do fine without catering to families - I don't see why Snapchat couldn't do the same?

It's about the audience. Snapchat advertisers don't want to be associated with adult content. Adult entertainers are catering to their paying audience.

My point wasn’t to turn Snapchat into an adult entertainment site. It was simply to accept and embrace its fate as a sexting tool. Dating apps are also used for this purpose (frankly their whole purpose is to find people you’d eventually fuck with) and yet they are a socially acceptable thing to use and advertisers don’t have any problems with them, so I don’t see why it would be any different for Snapchat.

Re: Nobody Trusts Facebook, Twitter Is a Hot Mess, What Is Snapchat Doing?

#183

Post by lazzlazzlazz »

joshvm wrote: post #179
newswriter99 wrote: post #5

Takes three paragraphs to get to the answer: Instagram stories. Snapschat is busy trying to remain relevant as Instagram one-ups it again and again. Other than teenagers using it to sext, Snapchat is largely useless compared to Insta.

Disagree. Currently helping run a summer camp with lots of Big component of these apps is the group dynamic. Plays well with the current culture of social capital, messages can be easily broadcast, rated, commented on, shared around. But you also have the option of things being semi-ephemeral.

I used to see that among the <18 crowd, but Snapchat has evaporated weirdly quickly. I'm only hearing about Insta and a long tail of other apps. Lots and lots of conventional texting/iMessage.

Re: Nobody Trusts Facebook, Twitter Is a Hot Mess, What Is Snapchat Doing?

#184

Post by grillvogel »

newswriter99 wrote: post #5

Takes three paragraphs to get to the answer: Instagram stories. Snapschat is busy trying to remain relevant as Instagram one-ups it again and again. Other than teenagers using it to sext, Snapchat is largely useless compared to Insta.

I'm in my 30s and most of my friends use snapchat for instant messaging, that is the primary purpose of snapchat.

Re: Nobody Trusts Facebook, Twitter Is a Hot Mess, What Is Snapchat Doing?

#185

Post by rohit2412 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #152
rohit2412 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bring listened to by the government is very different from being psychologically manipulated by political parties.

Honestly, I'd rather be snooped on by a corporation for advertising purposes than snooped on by the government for worse purposes.

Political psychological manipulation is also done via advertising.

I think the scary part of 1984 was not that the govt spies on its citizens, but that the govt tries to control their thoughts themselves. If thought crime is eliminated via newspeak, the spying is meaningless

Re: Nobody Trusts Facebook, Twitter Is a Hot Mess, What Is Snapchat Doing?

#186

Post by toomuchtodo »

Rjevski wrote: post #182
toomuchtodo wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about the audience. Snapchat advertisers don't want to be associated with adult content. Adult entertainers are catering to their paying audience.

My point wasn’t to turn Snapchat into an adult entertainment site. It was simply to accept and embrace its fate as a sexting tool. Dating apps are also used for this purpose (frankly their whole purpose is to find people you’d eventually fuck with) and yet they are a socially acceptable thing to use and advertisers don’t have any problems with them, so I don’t see why it would be any different for Snapchat.

I agree it would work if Snap has a sub brand tailored towards sexting, where ad buyers could segment between Snap and a more avant-garde experience.

Re: Nobody Trusts Facebook, Twitter Is a Hot Mess, What Is Snapchat Doing?

#187

Post by bogomipz »

>"The meeting I attended started with an employee lighting a candle in the center of the circle to dedicate the session to a cause, and then proceeded with a series of free-­association prompts. A moderator asked us to tell a story about our names or a memory related to summer. Outside the round room, morale at Snap has been low recently. Inside it, employees were connecting with each other, at times emotionally, about their childhoods, hopes, and fears."

This could be scene from an episode of HBO's Silicon Valley. This seems more like an exercise in humiliation than morale boosting. What's next Ayahuasca ceremonies, shaman, drum circles, primal scream therapy?

I would quit before I participated in any of this nonsense. This CEO sounds like a real piece of work. This is why you shouldn't buy stock that withholds all voting rights from public shareholders.

Re: Nobody Trusts Facebook, Twitter Is a Hot Mess, What Is Snapchat Doing?

#189

Post by bduerst »

josephjrobison wrote: post #175
bduerst wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google+ tried to copy facebook functionality too, right? While instagram already has the users, I think the point is that you can build it, but you can't make people use it. Instagram can prevent existing users from leaving snapchat for 'stories', but will it really entice snapchat users to come over to instagram, given that social networks are a function of people who use it?

Instagram Stories daily active users is 400 million. [1] Snapchat dau is 188 million. Given that this declined from 191 million from Q1 2018, seems Instagram is crushing them. Anecdotally I’m surprised Snapchat is even doing this well. Before Instagram Stories I had probably 50 people a day posting new Snapchat stories. Now it’s a handful a week. They’re all on Instagram. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/73031…

1.5% QoQ decrease in DAUs is hardly being crushed, especially when they have a 45% YoY increase in revenue [1]. See? I can google and cherry pick stats from statista too.

My point point about social being a two-sided market still stands regardless of your personal experience.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/552694/snapchat-quarterl...

Re: Nobody Trusts Facebook, Twitter Is a Hot Mess, What Is Snapchat Doing?

#190

Post by bduerst »

Maro wrote: post #119
bduerst wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no, Facebook sold 50M users worth of data to Cambridge Analytica through API access. The fact that FB didn't charge more to make it comparable to ads revenue is their own fault. The user data access was a feature , meant to entice more companies like CA to use Facebook APIs. Again, this flagrant violation of privacy is why people distrust Facebook, because they have proven they will fork over user information whol…

Re "Facebook sold API access to Cambridge Analytica": it was free, CA didn't pay any money to FB, they simply had an app on FB. Re "they have proven they will fork over user information wholesale if it means continued company growth": that's very fair criticism imo. I would just note that "fork over" here means "give access to apps on the platform". Also, they changed this mechanism years ago, this scraping vector is…

>"Scraping Vector"

This is the most slanted, disingenuous way to describe a fully-documented feature of an API I've encountered in a while, and the fact you're an ex-FB employee makes it seem like you're astroturfing HN. What CA did was bad, but FB enabled them regardless of how you spin it.

Post reply on HN