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Snapchat’s product is booming

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Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#151

As a user of Snapchat since high school (now 25), I’m noticing a resurgence in my friends using the platform. I never left because I never joined Instagram due to my distain for Facebook. Snap is a great app to keep in contact with “real” friends. I only have groups with true friends and only watch my friends’ stories.

*disdain

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).…

I have kids and I fully agree with your analysis. You do not want a 10 year old to be exposed to pornographic content.

Kids are going to be exposed anyway but better to have exposure at a time where theyhave the maturity to handle it.

Education takes time and is hard. It is very nice as parent to know that my kids have some relatively safe social apps.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#153
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…

Apple does not allow adult content on the app store. For example, OnlyFans does not have an iOS app as a result. If Snap were to openly embrace adult content, they could risk getting booted from the app store.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#154
post #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).

https://casper.io -> https://twitter.com/LiamCottle/status/1406616490783117322

> iPhone farm to generate security tokens to access @Snapchat private APIs

(back in 2016)

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wou…

The problem is you don't know in 2012 that these are the two options. Obviously no one with the power of foresight is going to choose option B, so I don't get what point you think you're making.

* The first comment in this thread applauds the courage to turn down a $3bn acquisition, and suggests that the eventual outcome has vindicated that decision.

* The second comment suggests that this vindication is debatable based on Instagram’s valuation being higher than Snapchat’s

* I agree with the first comment and disagree with the second comment, so the point I am trying to make is that it the decision to turn down the acquisition was indeed vindicated.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#156
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).…

I have kids and I fully agree with your analysis. You do not want a 10 year old to be exposed to pornographic content. Kids are going to be exposed anyway but better to have exposure at a time where theyhave the maturity to handle it. Education takes time and is hard. It is very nice as parent to know that my kids have some relatively safe social apps.

The status quo is girls (or their marketing teams), randomly "quick add" profiles, exposing minors to their teases and adult content.

You're pretty much guaranteed to see unsolicited prn in sc these days. Just create a fresh account and wait for the random friend requests.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Older people just ruin social media platforms. Not really. The best parts of Twitter are amongst professional circles where people use their real names and can provide unique insight into topics that you would never get anywhere else. For example all of the open source intelligence with Ukraine or learning about the intricacies of Brexit from actual trade negotiators. Whereas if you look at Reddit right now it is i…

Quoted post unavailable.

Depp was found by a UK court to have assaulted Heard, on a dozen occasions and put her in “fear for her life” three times [1]. So for me it seems clear that they are both abusive and not worthy of anyone's time.

But my point was that the Depp/Heard issue has very much crossed the line into being completely irrational and morphed into a generalised anti-women sentiment. And it's very much radicalising the younger men in particular on Reddit in ways you don't see on other social media platforms.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/mar/25/johnny-depp-los...

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#158
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 also helps to already be independently wealthy.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#159
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…

Because they are a public company and institutional shareholders wouldn't let them.

Before going public they wouldn't have been able to pass it by VCs already invested or raise any more capital. OnlyFans has this problem.

Even if they had offered it early they would have struggled the same way OnlyFans did recently over payments, and with no way to police it on their technology probably would have been embattled with media and public perception way worse.

Banks, investors and other companies don't want to deal with Pornography and sex workers despite the massive proliferation online.

They wouldn't have been able to have all their partnerships, generate revenue from other sources or have apps either.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#160

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

The answer is in the article. Young people do. How old are you? No one I know uses it, but that makes sense to me. I'm internet-old now.

I'm 36 and using it a few times a week, mostly with my much younger siblings in their early 20's. Another family friend who has a daughter got her first smartphone recently, and snapchat was one of the first installs on that device. I used it as well pretty heavily when it first came out to keep in touch with family and friends.

Weirdly enough I have an interview with Snap in a few weeks as well. Despite the drop that tech stocks have seen everywhere the last year or so I think it's still a strong company to try and join.

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