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Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

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Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#81
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If you run an experiment and time spent per day is cut in half, that's a pretty clear signal the experiment shouldn't ship, vision or not.

What sort of web site do you run where customers pay by the minute?

It's generally assumed that with advertising, more time == more money, but even that's somewhat questionable.

In a B2B context, time spent per day cut in half sounds like a huge productivity boost. Of course, it could also be that you've made it so difficult to use now that people do a little bit, export to CSV and then use some other tool. But the data won't tell you that.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#82
post #59
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purely anecdotally, the one place I worked at that embraced A/B testing went to such an extreme that it stifled the vision. It became so risk averse that nothing was really happening, yet at the same time the business was not in the place to sustain growth or even profit that way. This is because the introduction of such a data driven mentality meant the only people empowered to suggest decisions or experiments or ap…

Your experience is similar to mine. I'm a marketing consultant so I get to work with a lot of different teams. People that either over-rely on Founder vision AND people that overly rely on data tend to not do well. It's why I've stopped saying data-driven and now say data informed. The best teams have a solid vision, but let the data guide the specific implementation of said vision. You need a healthy mix of both.

I really like "data-informed" as an alternative to "data-driven". I'm going to copy that! It is important to honestly acknowledge the limitations of the data.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#83
Success in entertainment (and this includes social media startups) is really hard to replicate! I wonder why that is. It seems easier to consistently start enterprise software companies than it is to create new social media apps.

Facebook's strategy of just buying what works and creating a media conglomerate for advertisers seems very smart to the casual observer.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has autoplaying video with sound instead... Brave new world indeed.

Ah apologies - I block that by default. I haven't yet found a way to block the stupid GDPR cookie pop ups.

Brave browser takes care of that too.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#85
When I was much younger, I thought that adults didn’t know how to use new tech, and that’s why they didn’t bother with new fangled tech like Facebook.

Now that I’m closing in on my 30th birthday, I realize I had it all wrong. I can use snapchat, I just don’t understand why I would want to use it.

I’m curious what Snapchat will do to try and entice people like me into using it. From where I sit, I’m having a very hard time imagining what they could possibly do.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#86

Success in entertainment (and this includes social media startups) is really hard to replicate! I wonder why that is. It seems easier to consistently start enterprise software companies than it is to create new social media apps. Facebook's strategy of just buying what works and creating a media conglomerate for advertisers seems very smart to the casual observer.

Maybe unconventional successes in entertainment tend to be hard to replicate because they require years gaining expertise and creating a strong product and that the ebbs and flows of public taste happen to favour that product when it comes out.

If you're lucky, you might score a long shot at a moving target from very far away, but it will be hard to score a second one.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#87
post #23

I used to be a heavy user of Snapchat, and fall into its dominant demographic - young* (edit, had forgotten this word) users. I remember buying stock in the company, and the same week, their big update rolling out, and quite literally burying my friends and their stories underneath the "overcrowded pile of clickbait" mentioned in the article. That, I believe, is where Snap really went wrong, and what drove 3 million…

I don't have many friends on Snapchat, but I follow a lot of celebrities. Literally the same week, 90% of them stopped posting, and it never recovered. Now it's a ghost town. People who followed friends got hit, people who follow celebrities got hit, I just don't get it what was on their mind.

[deleted]

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#88

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…

They lost it as soon as they thought glasses were a good idea

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you run an experiment and time spent per day is cut in half, that's a pretty clear signal the experiment shouldn't ship, vision or not.

What sort of web site do you run where customers pay by the minute? It's generally assumed that with advertising, more time == more money, but even that's somewhat questionable. In a B2B context, time spent per day cut in half sounds like a huge productivity boost. Of course, it could also be that you've made it so difficult to use now that people do a little bit, export to CSV and then use some other tool. But the d…

This isna thread about snapchat. People aren't on snapchat for efficiency. Those people moved to instagram instead.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#90

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…

I think you hit the nail on the head here. There were reports that came out from several sources that Evan ignored all feedback from product and design including hard numbers from early tests. There were apparently several groups internally that tried to stop the massive changes from dropping without adequate testing and iteration. Those groups were overridden by Evan in favor of "vision" and that apparent lack of di…

> then the board should absolutely give him the boot in the next 24 months.

Very funny, Snapchat has two classes of stock and he owns enough of the kind that matters that no one can oust him. I looked through the S-1 when they were going public and decided owning the shares they were selling to the public was the equivalent of a "board observer" seat. You are free to watch him run his company, but it is still his company

https://www.recode.net/2017/2/21/14670314/snap-ipo-stock-vot...

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