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Snapchat’s product is booming

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Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#121

Post by _fat_santa »

vernon99 wrote: post #114
52358 wrote: post #66

I wonder how many people here are aware of Snapchat's thriving underground OnlyFans-like ecosystem. I also wonder how much of that is driving Snap's user metrics. As far back as 2014, I remember there being a huge ecosystem of "premium" snaps (sometimes known as "prem(ium) girls"), whereby you would pay the account owner a one time or recurring fee for access to a "premium" snapchat account where the owner posts nude…

What I don't get is why Snap never tried to build a good product around that and give creators (uhmm) a good way to monetize their profiles. This seems like such an obvious thing to do to me. Why would you give up on that usage and allow it to move to OnlyFans and other platforms if you already have it? And even more, penalize your audience for such practice. And same question to Instagram team (I left the company a…

My guess is they feared it would pollute the brand. SNAP's key demo is high school and college aged kids.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#122

Post by RileyJames »

vernon99 wrote: post #114
52358 wrote: post #66

I wonder how many people here are aware of Snapchat's thriving underground OnlyFans-like ecosystem. I also wonder how much of that is driving Snap's user metrics. As far back as 2014, I remember there being a huge ecosystem of "premium" snaps (sometimes known as "prem(ium) girls"), whereby you would pay the account owner a one time or recurring fee for access to a "premium" snapchat account where the owner posts nude…

What I don't get is why Snap never tried to build a good product around that and give creators (uhmm) a good way to monetize their profiles. This seems like such an obvious thing to do to me. Why would you give up on that usage and allow it to move to OnlyFans and other platforms if you already have it? And even more, penalize your audience for such practice. And same question to Instagram team (I left the company a…

Are there any good examples of product that maintains popularity within youth / teen markets while enabling monetisation of adult content?

It seems near an impossibility.

From a product perspective it would be possible, tho it’d be playing with fire. Very different when young people see adult content and you ban it vs they see the adult content you condone but you didn’t intend them to reach. (And they will try to).

But from the perception perspective, even harder. When adults (some parents) see snap as an adult entertainment product, they are not going to want kids using it. Even if there’s some suitable product barrier between the audiences.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#123

Post by thrown12 »

52358 wrote: post #66

I wonder how many people here are aware of Snapchat's thriving underground OnlyFans-like ecosystem. I also wonder how much of that is driving Snap's user metrics. As far back as 2014, I remember there being a huge ecosystem of "premium" snaps (sometimes known as "prem(ium) girls"), whereby you would pay the account owner a one time or recurring fee for access to a "premium" snapchat account where the owner posts nude…

Installed it for the first time after ... 5 years?

The top suggested channels were about 80% porn.

The avatars of the people there did not look over 18.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#124

Post by kaashif »

paxys wrote: post #97

Lots of people showing their age in this thread. The discussion is essentially "I and my social group don't use Snapchat therefore their numbers are fake". If you go talk to people under 25 you will see a very different picture. Snapchat and TikTok are dominating the social media landscape.

I don't think it's just age - people here have a tendency to live in a tech bubble regardless of age. I'm under 25 and I've never used Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and I think it's because I live in an out-of-touch bubble.

Despite ideas that at college you're supposed to meet people different to you, my college experience mainly consisted of me finding "my people" i.e. tech-obsessed nerds who use Reddit, Hacker News, IRC, Signal, and Discord. And that bubble only got more bubbly when I got internships and jobs at tech companies.

I don't want to project too hard, but it's easy to see how a site like HN could attract lots of people like that who don't engage with Snapchat regardless of age.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#125

Post by sillysaurusx »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #108
paxys wrote: post #97

Lots of people showing their age in this thread. The discussion is essentially "I and my social group don't use Snapchat therefore their numbers are fake". If you go talk to people under 25 you will see a very different picture. Snapchat and TikTok are dominating the social media landscape.

Does TikTok really remain that popular with the younger generation? I know content creators use it, but I'd expect most kids would prefer to keep content private. Is it really that popular for regular kids? Truthfully, whenever I open Instagram or TikTok it's almost entirely thirst-traps in my timeline. But maybe that's just how the algorithm has been trained for me.

Not sure about the younger generation, but TikTok is certainly dominating mine.

Here are all the TikToks I’ve saved: https://imgur.com/a/YuxWObp

The most interesting part is that “educational” outnumbers “lol” by about 5 to 4. I learn a lot on TikTok — more than Twitter. Of course, HN is still #1 for that (especially for depth) but production quality has been ramping up. TikTok recently emailed 10 minute videos, and it’s a matter of time till they do creator partnerships.

The effect is pretty magical. I recently filmed TikTok converting my 70yo parents into users within 5min: https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1515056484668870659?s=2...

To get good algorithm recommendations, you have to use the “not interested” button. (Long press on a video.)

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#126

Post by ladon86 »

paxys wrote: post #99
guelo wrote: post #98

I always cheer for Snapchat just because of the courage it took to turn down Zuckerberg's $3 billion offer in 2013. If you compare Evan Spiegel to Kevin Systrom (Instagram founder), Spiegel is 6 times richer and he didn't have to kowtow to Zuckerberg for all those years. Hopefully that's a lesson to founders to go for it, build something real and don't sell out.

It's not as straightforward a comparison. Instagram is still worth 3-5x more than Snapchat today. It's not obvious that they would have seen the same growth had they stayed independent.

It seems pretty straightforward to me from the perspective of the founder. Would you rather:

A) Be worth $6.6bn and have control of your company, with people generally crediting the company's success with your leadership

or

B) Be worth $1.6bn and have your (former) company be a division of Zuck's empire that's technically worth 3-5x more to shareholders, but (as you just demonstrated) people generally say that it would be worth far less if Facebook hadn't acquired it?

I think Kevin Systrom probably doesn't give a shit about how much Instagram contributes to Meta's market cap these days, but I imagine that he _does_ care about the impact of Instagram on global culture. At the $1bn+ level, it's all about power and legacy. Evan Spiegel has retained the power to shape his legacy.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#127

Post by pm90 »

tssva wrote: post #101

My survey of 1 teenager, my 15 year old daughter, reveals that it is the preferred messaging platform for her friends and others at her school. Due to one of her activities she travels regularly along the east coast and a few times a year to other locations across the US. When she makes friends during the trips the preferred means to stay in touch from both parties is SnapChat. So I tend to believe the numbers being…

It’s funny how it’s always the young at the forefront of new tech and rapidly disappear as soon as their parents start getting on the platform. I kinda get this; I used to be on Facebook a lot, then my parents got on there, then all their age group, and that’s when both the experience started sucking (ads love older people with money) and the interactions started sucking (more weird/angry political nonsense/conspiracy shit).

Older people just ruin social media platforms.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#128

Post by toxicFork »

tssva wrote: post #101

My survey of 1 teenager, my 15 year old daughter, reveals that it is the preferred messaging platform for her friends and others at her school. Due to one of her activities she travels regularly along the east coast and a few times a year to other locations across the US. When she makes friends during the trips the preferred means to stay in touch from both parties is SnapChat. So I tend to believe the numbers being…

Relatives, the bane of social media.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#129

Post by ramraj07 »

ElectronShak wrote: post #49

Stories seem so obvious right now but wow, that was some creativity from Evan Spiegel. Snapchat is built on genuine innovativeness.

They used to be a constant good idea machine. Not just stories, but so many innovations in messaging app ux. Still remember kids going effing mad and disrupting schools when they released video chats. Still some of the coolest most Intuitive ux ideas I’ve seen.

Not sure how the culture is right now however.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#130

Post by ramraj07 »

thesuitonym wrote: post #57

> Messaging is infamously sticky: once you start messaging in one place it’s rare to go elsewhere to reach the same people. IRC, ICQ/AIM, Y!M, MSN, Skype would all beg to differ.

Every one of them deserved to die, and they died a slow death with no dignity, they had ample time to nut up. Especially msn and Skype.
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