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Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

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Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

#51

Post by zapzupnz »

Rjevski wrote: post #49
bigfartchili wrote: post #6

This feels like what happened to digg. Reddit did their redesign right. Many people hated it and they gave the option to go to the old reddit immediately after the new version was released.

The new redesign completely melts down my MacBook (2016, so not outdated by any means) every time I try to load a page. It’s loading more shit JavaScript than actual content. I’m not sure what is it that you find good about the new design? The old one did the job perfectly with the added bonus on working on less powerful machines.

The person to whom you're responding isn't calling the redesign good; rather, that reddit lets you revert it.

Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

#52

Post by dgellow »

zapzupnz wrote: post #50
xref wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN both has an edit button and is not susceptible to your hypothetical. these are solvable problems.

HN also has a stricter set of community guidelines (which aren't in themselves all that strict to start with), more heavily moderated, and a generally well-educated, mature-minded user base that is generally appreciative of these two elements.

And way less users.

Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

#53

Post by zapzupnz »

dgellow wrote: post #52
zapzupnz wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN also has a stricter set of community guidelines (which aren't in themselves all that strict to start with), more heavily moderated, and a generally well-educated, mature-minded user base that is generally appreciative of these two elements.

And way less users.

Yep, way fewer users. And what spam accounts exist get squashed pretty quickly. If HN ever releases statistics on the number of users, I'm sure they have more dignity than to include spam and bot accounts — which is, I'm sure, the majority of Twitter accounts.

Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

#54

Post by 1337biz »

Klover wrote: post #39
troquerre wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were not snaps target user

Indeed. Similar to how young people will read books while their parents barely finish the sensational short articles in a newspaper. They seem to be more willing to figure things out, especially combined with their tribal actions like going to great lengths to make sure that everything they wear is black, or has a certain logo on it, or that they only listen to particular music. If a particular social app has a gate,…

Very good points. That idea of creating something for kids that others are not/not willing to figure out, is really fascinating. Probably happens most of the time unintentionally.

Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

#55

Post by smelendez »

tsomctl wrote: post #30
icelancer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fix the abuse problem This has been a problem for about 30 years online, so good luck with all that. > add an edit button User tweets out something nice. 10k retweets. Then changes it to something political.

Make it so that you can only change one or two characters, and make every edited tweet have a prominent button to see the original tweet. Maybe make it so that you can’t change links, images, or other media.

You're still inviting trolls.

"What an amazing pitch!" becomes "what an amazing witch!" (or worse). Well-known users would hate it because they'd be mocked for stepping into the troll trap.

Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

#56

Post by bob_theslob646 »

adventured wrote: post #34
rokhayakebe wrote: post #8

This may be a good time to buy Snap. I remember FB being worth $33B some time after going public.

$294 million operating loss on $297 million in revenue for their latest quarter. Snap's operating picture is an accountant's nightmare. By the time Facebook was five years old, fiscal 2009, they generated a $229m profit on $777m in sales. They turned profitable in the second half of their fourth year. Why? Relative financial discipline. Snap has taken the opposite approach, wild financial irresponsibility (no doubt e…

While I agree with your statement, I think you are giving "financial discipline" way too much weight.

As you probably know Facebook( Instagram) did copy " stories" from Snapchat. When your competitor effectively steals your secret sauce, what do you do? I believe that is why they went with their radical UI design change.( In order to retain users, which backfired)

I am not justifying the cash burn that snap had, just saying that competitors definitely were a factor in them not being financial disciplined.

Another major negative was from the get go with that their shares listed are non voting which was a major turn off to wall street which got them blackballed from being included in the SP500.(Has nothing to do with running a company or financial discipline, but definitely a negative when large institutions cannot invest in you because of strict bylaws.)

Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

#57

Post by nradov »

manigandham wrote: post #32
adventured wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't easily afford to splurge on the best acquisitions at this point. Instagram cost $1 billion. YouTube cost $1.65 billion. Snapchat is heading toward bankruptcy or a forced sale if they don't dramatically cut costs. They're down to $1.4b in cash (from $2b three quarters prior). They can't safely buy an Instagram at this point. Pretty soon they're going to be the $1-$2 billion acquisition. Twitter is in much b…

Sure, but I'm talking about buy competitors before they get to the 1B acq price, otherwise they're already close to Snap's size. Agree with the rest. It's both interesting and troubling that the giants have so much cashflow that they continue consuming new companies for a long time without worry. All companies die eventually but we're in a whole new world with 1T market caps.

You mean competitors like WhatsApp? The price can go from 0 to $1B awfully fast.

Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

#58

Post by toasterlovin »

troquerre wrote: post #26
toasterlovin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially Snap's, as I don't remember anyone complaining about the interface. Surely you’re joking? I make software for a living and I was utterly and completely lost in Snapchat. Easily the most confusing software I’ve used in a long time.

You were not snaps target user

I am both aware of that and completely unbothered by it. I was responding to a specific claim about how easy the app was to use.

Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

#59

Post by ppseafield »

sowhatquestion wrote: post #24
bigfartchili wrote: post #6

This feels like what happened to digg. Reddit did their redesign right. Many people hated it and they gave the option to go to the old reddit immediately after the new version was released.

Honest question: what's so bad about the reddit redesign?

The information density is much lower. It's harder to scan a page for its content because everything is more embellished. It's less focused on text, which IMHO used to be one of Reddit's best features. (Design feature.) And it feels very generic, like a basic Bootstrap template.

Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

#60

Post by vikingcaffiene »

Speigal is yet another disciple of the Steve Jobs school of management. The idea that if you are an asshole to everyone and care a lot about fonts, you’ll repeat the success of Apple. It’s a toxic notion of startup culture and it needs to die.
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