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Snapchat’s product is booming

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Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#21

I don't mean this to be mean, but do people really believe these active user counts at face value? I personally see these numbers and assume half are bots or controlled marketing accounts to boost viewers or spam comments. Just going off personal experience using these sort of apps.

the growth is about in line with independent surveys https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media...

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#22

I don't mean this to be mean, but do people really believe these active user counts at face value? I personally see these numbers and assume half are bots or controlled marketing accounts to boost viewers or spam comments. Just going off personal experience using these sort of apps.

I would guess that you could uncover this information in Snapchat's 10K filings.

In fact, I found the answer to your question on the 4th page of their annual filing to shareholders[1]:

> While these metrics are determined based on what we believe to be reasonable estimates of our user base for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring how our products are used across large populations globally. For example, there may be individuals who have unauthorized or multiple Snapchat accounts, even though we forbid that in our Terms of Service and implement measures to detect and suppress that behavior. We have not determined the number of such multiple accounts.

It seems to me that Snap is quite open about their active user counts.

[1] https://seekingalpha.com/filing/6183813

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#23

Serious question, who actually uses Snapchat? I haven't heard it mentioned anywhere in at least six months.

Lots of people, and I think the narrative that they died when instagram copied stories is sort of bogus. I know way more people who use and have used snapchat than who use Twitter. - Millenial

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#24

Serious question, who actually uses Snapchat? I haven't heard it mentioned anywhere in at least six months.

I had my first intern last summer - she's going to college this fall. She used Snapchat throughout the day to communicate with friends. I asked why-- it's non-public, informal, and low-friction in social terms (easier to ask for snap than a phone number). I got the sense that she was continuously lightly dropping in to various group conversations, while simultaneously talking to close friends, often by simply recordi…

This is pretty close to my own experience. I actively use Snapchat more than any other social platform because in many ways, it's not really a social "platform", in the same way that Instagram or Facebook or Tiktok are platforms. There are some people that use it that way, but largely, Snapchat is a convenient way of ephemeral, low-friction way to include a few people into your life. A picture here, a link to a cool article there, to a few friends at a time in a non-public way (very few people use it to cultivate an online persona in the way the above platforms encourage) that disappears within a day or so unless explicitly saved.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#26

I don’t buy Snapchat’s numbers. Their metrics all suggest an inflated user count.

How so? They define a Daily Active User "as a registered Snapchat user who opens the Snapchat application at least once during a defined 24-hour period" in their quarterly report:

Source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001564408/000156459...

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#27

I don’t buy Snapchat’s numbers. Their metrics all suggest an inflated user count.

How so? They define a Daily Active User "as a registered Snapchat user who opens the Snapchat application at least once during a defined 24-hour period" in their quarterly report: Source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001564408/000156459...

Snapchat has been more aggressive at push notifications (such as @xxx friend posted a new story!) to move more MAUs / WAUs into DAUs category.

These strategies have been employed by other competitors as aggressive as well though. So it is probably still comparable. I would say Snapchat's metrics are more "authentic" a few years ago, but now it is more "comparable".

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#28

Evan had this right - tracking as the primary value prop for advertising is a loser's game. Marketing is much more than just ads, and Snapchat has rebuffed going the easy route, honored by market participants, to uphold this principle. They will be an enduring company because of this. How 'big' of a company is up for debate, but honestly not worth the bits to transmit - they are one of the few, if only, doing good bu…

I think they're making money, sure; but the promoted content on Snapchat is a total tabloid cesspool of click-bait garbage. I'd rather see ads for the Amazon product I bought last week, tbh.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#29

I don't mean this to be mean, but do people really believe these active user counts at face value? I personally see these numbers and assume half are bots or controlled marketing accounts to boost viewers or spam comments. Just going off personal experience using these sort of apps.

Snapchat has been more proactive on fighting bot than other competitors. You can easily copy the cookie from instagram.com and write a bot with puppeteer. You cannot just sniff the traffic from Snapchat app and hope to write a bot with that. It has been aggressive at binary obfuscation for request signing, and cracking down the 3rd party mods (such as the Snapchat Phantom mod).

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#30

I don't mean this to be mean, but do people really believe these active user counts at face value? I personally see these numbers and assume half are bots or controlled marketing accounts to boost viewers or spam comments. Just going off personal experience using these sort of apps.

Snapchat's userbase is more organic than most other social media platforms. I don't think I've ever seen a bot, and the "social circles" are much more private since it's less optimized towards meeting/finding new people. I'm sure there are still ways to profit from spamming or botting on snap but I can't really think of any. And not only is the social discovery potential pretty limited ( a part from celebrity accounts) but it's also only available on mobile apps (maybe the new snapcamera changed that but that's recent).

Maybe it's just me but in general, I use snap in a way that's pretty different to any other social media. I don't use it a lot anymore though, and it's still hard to explain that "difference" honestly

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