Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Snapchat is Intrinsically Worthless

roymurdock.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 128 posts

Re: Snapchat is Intrinsically Worthless

#81

Post by deanblacc »

cylinder wrote: post #56

Imagine a beach. People come to the beach, play, build sand castles they later destroy. It's one beach on a long stretch of coastline. But this particular beach is incredibly popular, where lots of young people go to hang out with each other. How much would you pay to own that beach? How would you justify that investment -- would you plan to charge an admission fee? Would you wrap the beach in ads and sponsors? Would…

Great analogy. I mean, they charge something like 18$ for a beach chair on South Beach.. People still go and still pay.

I don't know, the article came across as missing the point in my opinion.

Re: Snapchat is Intrinsically Worthless

#82

Post by gojomo »

edoardo wrote: post #27

I published an article about Snapchat a couple of days ago. Yes, it is. Snapchat is not a "sustainable business", it's a trend or a bubble. People are using it now, because it's cool; but in a couple of years, there will be another trend and so on. Even if they are still alive after 5 years, the valuation is ridiculous. Entrepreneurship is not about money, but at some point you need to face this problem and have a so…

People said the same about Facebook & Twitter. People thought Google overpaid for YouTube – now it's clear it would have been a steal at twice the price.

You mention Groupon. I've knocked Groupon a lot, but it's still got a public-market-cap of $7B, more than the Google buyout offer people said they were insane to reject.

Re: Snapchat is Intrinsically Worthless

#83

Post by Guest98130 »

cylinder wrote: post #56

Imagine a beach. People come to the beach, play, build sand castles they later destroy. It's one beach on a long stretch of coastline. But this particular beach is incredibly popular, where lots of young people go to hang out with each other. How much would you pay to own that beach? How would you justify that investment -- would you plan to charge an admission fee? Would you wrap the beach in ads and sponsors? Would…

It's simple, you buy the beach next door, and wait for the popular beach to implement any of the above changes. Then you advertise as the beach without ads, the beach without admission fees, or the beach where you can build free sand castles. Then when the people come, you sell your newly successful beach, and run.

Re: Snapchat is Intrinsically Worthless

#84

Post by vidarh »

Segmentation wrote: post #41
eli wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure most people would grasp the difference between a company that says it doesn't keep your data and a company that says it can't keep your data.

Probably not, but it could still be useful for privacy minded individuals. Especially if it was open sourced on GitHub.

Part of the problem here is that the privacy users care about here is not from a third party, but from whomever the recipient might otherwise choose to share the content with.

And that pretty much requires a party other than the recipient whose interest it is to lock down the client as much as possible to at least increase the hassle-factor in violating the senders trust.

Otherwise, if the recipient had the "EvilReplicatingToFacebook" fork of the app readily available, it'd quickly destroy any value in the app.

Re: Snapchat is Intrinsically Worthless

#85

Post by amplification »

ramirez60 wrote: post #37

The comment about stickers makes me think you don't understand how much money they make and how much people use them. It's massive. Look at Line made 17 million from stickers in Q1 this year, Kakao made 311 million in revenue and I'm not sure the breakdown but stickers is significant enough that it's mentioned in with gaming as the main source of revenue. Stickers, whether it's reasonable or not, are a great way to m…

I think if your main source of income is stickers, that's risky. They will (and already are) become commoditized - with MessageMe, Path, etc... all jumping onboard.

I'm guessing that stickers (siloed in each app) are a fad that will eventually go away.

Re: Snapchat is Intrinsically Worthless

#86

Post by ctdonath »

vidarh wrote: post #72
TrainedMonkey wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is unlikely that there will be another Facebook. Will there be a big social media website if Facebook dies? Probably yes, and in the near future it will likely be Google+. So if there was no Facebook would another Facebook clone take it's place? Intuitive answer is yes, until you start thinking. How did Facebook got so big? It was best product on the market. So now Facebook is dead, what happened to Facebo…

Facebook is the latest in a long range of "clones". It's not the first social media website of its kind, nor the 5th. Many have enjoyed temporary success in this market only to get crushed by some small misstep or other, or simply because something slightly better came along. How many here remember sixdegrees.com? (1996) That's the first social networking site I remember signing up to... Of course you must be "differ…

This. There is a definite finite life cycle of social sites. Would do investors well to study the rise, domination, fall, and practical disappearance of such sites. BBSs, usenet, Compuserve, AOL (freaking bought Time-Warner!), MySpace, many others - all out to take over the world at one time, all legitimately worth vast sums at their peak, all now little more than rotting corpses. Know when to invest, know when to cash out, know when to stay away.

Re: Snapchat is Intrinsically Worthless

#87

Post by joyeuse6701 »

As you correctly analyzed, snapchats value is majority in user-base. I believe it is specifically the attention of users that gives it value. We measure that with metrics like reach, views, clicks, messages sent etc. The attention comes from the novelty of it, as you adequately put, it has a low barrier to entry due to it's 'low pressure'. It must maintain that attention through low pressure to maintain value.

FB went the ad route a la google and then moved towards analytics. Twitter is doing the same. If snapchat went down that route they would have to analyze the photos taken, pictures drawn etc. to provide data to customers in the same way.

Not to get too meta, but there is always value in self-expression.

Re: Snapchat is Intrinsically Worthless

#88

Post by roymurdock »

cylinder wrote: post #56

Imagine a beach. People come to the beach, play, build sand castles they later destroy. It's one beach on a long stretch of coastline. But this particular beach is incredibly popular, where lots of young people go to hang out with each other. How much would you pay to own that beach? How would you justify that investment -- would you plan to charge an admission fee? Would you wrap the beach in ads and sponsors? Would…

This metaphor is helpful in terms of thinking about how users interact with the service and how advertisers and vendors might try to get at these users.

The very large problem with this metaphor is that you are not taking into barriers to entry. Beaches are valuable in the real world because it's impossible to change the ocean and extremely costly to remove rocks, import sand, bring in wildlife, build access points and accommodations, etc. to suit the needs of the beachgoers.

The digital beach market has low barriers to entry. If Snapchat ruins its beach with advertisements, pollution, and annoying fruit vendors, then users can very easily and very quickly move to another beach of similar or higher quality that can be built in a matter of days.

Re: Snapchat is Intrinsically Worthless

#89

Post by Guest98130 »

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #48
jrs99 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i feel that there is a 100% guarantee that there will be another facebook.

I think it is unlikely that there will be another Facebook. Will there be a big social media website if Facebook dies? Probably yes, and in the near future it will likely be Google+. So if there was no Facebook would another Facebook clone take it's place? Intuitive answer is yes, until you start thinking. How did Facebook got so big? It was best product on the market. So now Facebook is dead, what happened to Facebo…

Don't forget simply being new and fresh comes with a lot of benefits. Why do kids make top secret forts, no adults allowed? Why do people go to those little hole in the wall coffee shops and restaurants, where there is only one or two tables, and an old women behind the counter? The food? Sure, but even more so because the atmosphere feels unique and unspoiled by the mainstream. Why do people always search out new bands that no one else has discovered?

People like to be unique. They don't like to be grouped in with the rest of the world. This is especially true with teenagers. You don't have to make a better Facebook, you just have to make a new Facebook. It needs that feeling of being fun and exclusive, which Facebook is quickly lacking and can never gain.

Google+ will never succeed. Yes, they've invested countless dollars and time from some of the brightest minds available, but the name Google is simply too big, and too well known. It's boring from day one, there's nothing cool or hip about signing up on Google+.

Re: Snapchat is Intrinsically Worthless

#90

Post by [deleted] »

dakrisht wrote: post #75
dpcheng2003 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out smart people do dumb things all the time. The trick isn't being smart all the time, which is difficult. Rather, you want to be smart at the right time and convince other incredibly smart people to do something incredibly dumb in that fleeting moment. Last I checked, most of us have never created a messaging app that grew to 350M messages in two years. More importantly, most of us didn't also then convinc…

Yes, yes they do. But like you said, that's fine. Props to the SnapChat guys for cashing out, raising a ton of venture from sheep VCs and getting millions of users? YES, absolutely. Props to the SnapChat guys for creating something of value, substance, technology, IP, etc. None, zero. Just another BS app riding the wave of the top-10 in the appstore. It's not a WIN for society when you create garbage that has some so…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN