Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival • Hacker News Board

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#91

Post by jboy55 » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 8:19 PM UTC

21 wrote: post #23

thosakwe wrote: post #11

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.

I would have to wonder how many true celebrities, people whose fame come from outside of social media, felt the same frustrations at not being able to see their friends feeds as other users.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#92

Post by abakker » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 8:21 PM UTC

dwighttk wrote: post #65

abakker wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who would be the buyer, though? Microsoft? Alibaba? I can't see many acquirers wanting to get into the competitions that snapchat has gotten themselves into.

maybe Google finally gets their social network

Maybe Apple. They’ll just pull most of the ads and make it “privacy focused”. If they gave people an alternative to Facebook it would be a big move.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#93

Post by bootloop » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 8:36 PM UTC

askafriend wrote: post #33

iamleppert wrote: post #16

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…

Personal emotions and business don't work well together. They are great to sell an idea but the same person shouldn't be in charge of actually executing it because they will still do it even when everybody else tells them it's crap.

I had to experience it and I think it's actually one of the greatest dangers in startups.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#94

Post by _wp3r » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 8:38 PM UTC

Theodores wrote: post #40

pavlov wrote: post #21

”Adults, not teens. Messaging, not Stories. Developing markets, not the U.S.” So... Snap basically wants to be Facebook? Adults, messaging, developing world — Facebook is already enormously entrenched in the overlap of those markets thanks to Messenger and WhatsApp. FB has also shown the ability to clone Snap’s product innovations. I have a feeling 2019 is the year when Snap is acquired. The market cap is already bel…

The USP of Snapchat was that parents could not go through past messages as these would get deleted once read. So, if you had planned a night out on the town doing silly things you could still pretend to the parents that you would being having a sleep over at a best friend's house. Even if they went through the phone with a fine toothcomb the parents would not find evidence of plans for wrong-doing. Facebook is not ab…

I also viewed Snap as an platform built on a single missing SMS feature, temporal messages. They have added a bunch of other stuff, but that single feature was always the adoption driver, and eventually users figured out screenshots trump deletion. I also thought that the other features were in direct conflict with that adoption driver, as in actively providing negative user incentives for continued use.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#95

Post by sireat » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 8:38 PM UTC

asmithmd1 wrote: post #90

askafriend wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 com…

The sad thing is that it applies to many other companies these days, most notably Facebook, Google et al.

Why do people buy common shares which give them no voting rights as a shareholder?

Sure while company is minting money (or debt and marketshare) you can find a greater fool to offload your shares.

However when things turn the Zynga way, what recourse do you have with these no vote shares?

At least Bond holders and Preferred Shareholders have certain rights.

PS Then there are the Chinese stocks such as BABA where you do not even own the assets of the main company but I digress..

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#96

Post by agorabinary » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 8:46 PM UTC

iamleppert wrote: post #16

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…

Did they ever reverse the product redesign back to the original design? Haven't really used Snapchat at all but curious to know, thanks

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#97

Post by candiodari » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 8:48 PM UTC

And once again you read "slowed down and ruined it" (aside from the language, which is too strong) ... people REALLY respond to latency.

I wish Google would pay attention to this. Especially Gmail. It's just unacceptably slow and there is just no excuse.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#98

Post by artursapek » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 8:50 PM UTC

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #44

Kaveren wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Reddit is certainly trying to pivot toward social media, with probably the least enthusiasistic and most hostile user base for that change they could possibly have.

The magic of reddit has always been in its detachment from real-world social structure. Reddit is successful because it grouped users by common interests and eliminated the burden of having your real identity associated with your online alter-ego. If they ruin that in an effort to sell more ads, it will be a sad loss.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#99

Post by sonnyblarney » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 9:01 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #25

iamleppert wrote: post #16

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 it's unsurprising when founders of unicorns eschew A/B testing in favor of vision. Admitting part of their success was luck is tantamount to admitting "I went from nothing to a billionaire because the dice came up right." I don't know many people who would be comfortable truly accepting that. And even fewer who could do so AND be the type of driven person necessary. All while everyone around you is looking to…

This isn't quite fair.

You can just as easily A/B your company to death.

A/B usual represents an incremental comparison from one situation to another, and it helps 'walk down the feature path' ... but when you need to change paths, A/B testing is not going to help, this is where a bit of great PM talent is going to work.

Moreover, the more subtle the change, or more the basis' are not very comparable (two different apps), the less A/B has value.

For example: Snap was considered 'too complicated' for many users, they needed to make it simpler. But by doing so, they may alienate a bunch of current users, with the objective of making the app more amenable to the masses. This is a serious strategic issue. They might have gone about it somewhat differently but it's a difficult thing to do in any case, and they had to make changes.

The existential issue for Snap's problems is not this app change, it's the fact that all of Facebook's products are trying to eat them. Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger etc ... these are the real threats.

Re: Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival

#100

Post by baby » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 9:12 PM UTC

sireat wrote: post #95

asmithmd1 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 com…

The sad thing is that it applies to many other companies these days, most notably Facebook, Google et al. Why do people buy common shares which give them no voting rights as a shareholder? Sure while company is minting money (or debt and marketshare) you can find a greater fool to offload your shares. However when things turn the Zynga way, what recourse do you have with these no vote shares? At least Bond holders an…

You have rights if you own enough right?

Also why are there two kind of shares?