41–50 of 195 posts
Here's coverage without an insanely user hostile "WE ARE PART OF OATH YOUR PRIVACY IS IMPORTANT (BUT IT'S DIFFICULT TO FIND SETTINGS TO DISABLE COOKIES)" lightbox which cannot be dismissed: https://cheddar.com/videos/snap-ceo-evan-spiegel-company-mem...
Alternatively, disable JS: the page looks perfect, just the article and its images. I have to congratulate the TC frontend devs.
Snapchat has failed the test of feature vs. product. Everything that made Snapchat unique is something easily emulated in a myriad of other apps. When you strip away the interface, the only unique part of it was the network/aggregator-effect they have. However, they were much smaller than Instagram and as a result would be fighting an uphill battle with a product that already has the network and could easily duplicat…
The problem with Snap (as you pointed out) is that the network characteristics are similar to Facebook's or Instagram's....aka friends and family....aka people in your phone contacts. Facebook's fundamental value is that they were one of the first ones to capture the graph that already existed in your phone and brought it online at scale. However, the actual network they built isn't as novel or as difficult to build as something like Twitter which is a graph that existed nowhere else before.
LinkedIn is similar to Facebook in that the business contacts probably already existed in your phone or on a bunch of business cards. But because we don't want our professional lives and our personal lives to share the same spaces, LinkedIn was able to capture the professional opportunity by bringing business contacts online.
What does this all have to do with Snap? Well Snap has the unfortunate position of having similar network characteristics to Facebook's while also being in a similar social space albeit heavily skewed younger (I consider Instagram to be in a roughly similar social space). Snap probably felt like the demographic skew alone would be enough to balance out this weak position but I suspect they're finding out quickly that it is not since Instagram is proving to be a thriving space for young people too.
On the other hand, networks like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Nextdoor are all either unique networks underneath the primary interface or they share different social spaces that people usually don't want mixed. Anyone can make an interface but it's incredibly hard to grow a network in a particular social space. The latter almost always makes for a stronger moat. Snap needs to figure out how to make progress on the latter because I think many of their large problems stem from not having enough of a moat at the network level.
Hmmmmmmmmmm. The Google Mail redesign comes to mind. Gmail has 1.4 billion users. (April 2018 figure, Gmail's Wikipedia page.)
Google management, if you're listening: the writing is on the wall. You have it there black and white: "The biggest mistake we made with our redesign was compromising our core product value of being the fastest"
In this comment I outline some reach goals for you:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17873576
(That comment is written in a wishful style, what I know you can do and what I imagine you can do.)
You can do it! Just hire the best. Put the best on that team. 1.2 billion users mean you can afford it. You can do it.
Do it. You can do it. I believe in you with all my heart.
Maybe this will be the beginning of the end for the social media bubble?
Is there really a bubble? The players look fairly solidified to me. You have Facebook, which might not be as cool in all countries with younger users, and has had a lot of controversy surrounding fake news, election influence, and privacy, but it's doing well. You have Instagram, which is doing very well, was a great Facebook acquisition, helping their parent company even more. You have Twitter, which seems to be str…
Snapchat is still bleeding money, losing $353 million last quarter. I literally do not understand what they can be spending that much money on, can anyone clue me in? It can't be on infra and bandwidth.
So that’s $150mm per quarter, as a minimum (if their usage doesn’t meet that amount they have to pay the difference).
They are paying something like $200mm on R&D/quarter, and over $100mm on advertising and administrative each.
Their “cost of revenues” (I’m not exactly sure what this means for them...I wonder if it is discounts offered to advertisers) is another $190mm.
So a few hundred million here and a few hundred million there adds up to a $350mm quarterly loss.
What’s interesting is their R&D expenses have dropped 20% from the year ago quarter, while their sales and marketing have increased substantially. That does not bode well for the future either in my opinion (although it’s easily arguable that even $200mm per quarter on R&D seems excesssive for Snap).
Edit: I quickly compared them to Twitter, which isn’t known as the most leanest of run companies in the first place, but Twitter’s R&D costs are $139mm/quarter compared to over $200mm for SNAP. Their administraative costs are $74mm/quarter, compared to over $100mm for SNAP. How is SNAP spending so much more money than Twitter, and clearly producing a fraction of the output?
Snapchat is still bleeding money, losing $353 million last quarter. I literally do not understand what they can be spending that much money on, can anyone clue me in? It can't be on infra and bandwidth.
Q1 2018 financials here: https://investor.snap.com/news-releases/2018/05-01-2018-2115...
They had a working thing and then ruined it. I’m not sure how they managed to do that with a product change. Didn’t they have a way to release changes and measure impact before just forcing it on their entire user base? Once a company gets to this level, they need to recognize the role that luck played into their original product and design. They hit a resonance with people, and it was probably more luck and timing t…
Many possible changes have positive effects short term, but negative or even disastrous effects long term. A/B tests won't ever run long enough to discover these long term costs. When A/B facts displace common sense instead of it complementing it, you can a/b yourself into your own grave.
Maybe this will be the beginning of the end for the social media bubble?
Is there really a bubble? The players look fairly solidified to me. You have Facebook, which might not be as cool in all countries with younger users, and has had a lot of controversy surrounding fake news, election influence, and privacy, but it's doing well. You have Instagram, which is doing very well, was a great Facebook acquisition, helping their parent company even more. You have Twitter, which seems to be str…
And Nextdoor which is much younger but cemented itself with steady growth and a unique network.
I don't think any of these companies will have trouble making substantial money at scale for the foreseeable future.
Snap's problems are unique to Snap.
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They had a working thing and then ruined it. I’m not sure how they managed to do that with a product change. Didn’t they have a way to release changes and measure impact before just forcing it on their entire user base? Once a company gets to this level, they need to recognize the role that luck played into their original product and design. They hit a resonance with people, and it was probably more luck and timing t…
> Didn’t they have a way to release changes and measure impact before just forcing it on their entire user base? Many possible changes have positive effects short term, but negative or even disastrous effects long term. A/B tests won't ever run long enough to discover these long term costs. When A/B facts displace common sense instead of it complementing it, you can a/b yourself into your own grave.