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Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

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Re: Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

#71

Post by kahirsch »

nostromo wrote: post #45
RokStdy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um.. That's sort of their job? Why the outrage here? It's not like the story actually calls for Snapchat's CEO's head to really be severed. That might be offensive. I think the author's point is a good one. If CEO is really so obtuse he should go. If he is being coached to act this way then his coach should be fired[1]. Pretty straight forward business journalism. It's not like the business journalist went on a long…

On one hand you have a CEO that responded slowly to a fairly mild privacy exploit. On the other hand, he created an apparently billion+ dollar company almost overnight. So, I'm going to guess that SnapChat should keep its CEO.

On the third hand, he's turned down two offers of three to four billion dollars. Perhaps he should be fired for that!

Re: Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

#72

Post by jimsilverman »

jkelsey wrote: post #48
jimsilverman wrote: post #36

i'm shocked by the comments here. it was a massive and anticipated security flaw. the CEO's reaction was not to fix it, not to apologize, but to arrogantly lie about the severity of the threat. less than a week after the CEO deemed the attack theoretical, it happened. the CEO's reaction was not to fix it, not to apologize, but to offer an opt-out after the damage had been done. not sure why snapchat is getting a free…

I'm not attempting to defend Snapchat here, but it's probably because their primary user base is compromised of teenagers and college kids. I think it's fair to say that people don't value their privacy as much until they get older and experience the world for what it is.

are you an NSA agent?

Re: Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

#73

Post by mwctahoe »

Crito wrote: post #59
octatone2 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a generation who simply care not of privacy.

Is that really true? Why are people using Snapchat then, instead of SMS or even twitter? It seems to me that the entire premise of Snapchat is that their users care about privacy (even if they are rather naive or uninformed about how privacy works) .

in my opinion it's not popular because its private, its just easier to use to send pictures/videos to other people. the time limit makes it seem more "in the moment" good for a quick laugh and then its gone. a big plus is it lets you easily caption pictures and draw on them.

Re: Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

#74

Post by rickhanlonii »

code_duck wrote: post #58
jimsilverman wrote: post #36

i'm shocked by the comments here. it was a massive and anticipated security flaw. the CEO's reaction was not to fix it, not to apologize, but to arrogantly lie about the severity of the threat. less than a week after the CEO deemed the attack theoretical, it happened. the CEO's reaction was not to fix it, not to apologize, but to offer an opt-out after the damage had been done. not sure why snapchat is getting a free…

What I can figure out is why more hasn't been made of how the snapchat app doesn't delete viewed photos at all: it stores them in the phone permanently. http://m.ksl.com/index/story/sid/25106057?mobile_direct=y http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/partner-zone-infose... Seems to me like a massive breach of trust which defies the entire claim of the app.

I was confused by this for awhile until I started hanging around a group of people who use SnapChat almost as much as texting. For the most part they share innocuous "here's what I'm doing" type photos. They use SnapChat because it's a really easy to send a photo to everyone on their list at the same time individually when they want to share a photo of what they're doing at that moment, with no feed or wall or comments to maintain later.

Thus, they really don't care if the photos are saved anywhere because they're not concerned with the privacy of their photos--at worst the snaps they share are unflattering. Their main concern is that they don't want to maintain any photos later, they just want to tell each other 'hi, here's what I'm doing' and forget about it.

In other words, to them SnapChat isn't a platform to share photos secretly, it's a platform to share photos momentarily. SnapChat even sells it as this:

>The images might be a little grainy, and you may not look your best, but that's the point. It's about the moment, a connection between friends in the present, and not just a pretty picture.

I get it now. I still don't like SnapChat at all (the UI is ugly, the UX is par, and I don't like the attitude of the company), but I see the user appeal and I see why the users SnapChat wants most will continue to use the app even though one of their friends may be keeping that picture they took of their thanksgiving turkey permanently.

Re: Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

#75

Post by lotso »

BlackDeath3 wrote: post #69
lotso wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things people say at early stages of tech companies: Facebook... it's just a way to create a profile of yourself and share pictures and messages. Color me unimpressed! Tumblr... it's just a basic blogging platform... nothing new? Color me unimpressed! Twitter... it's a 140 character status updates? Color me unimpressed!

I'm still unimpressed by all three of those things (technically speaking). Perhaps they've got some cool stuff going on underneath somewhere, but as technologies, as whole, they just seem sort of lackluster to me for much the reasoning that you've mocked above. Perhaps I'm simply an outlier. Assuming that a startup's early state is little indication of what it eventually turns into, why would somebody invest in any o…

>Perhaps they've got some cool stuff going on underneath somewhere

They definitely do.

>they just seem sort of lackluster to me for much the reasoning that you've mocked above.

Not everyone is capable of being Elon Musk and creating SpaceX and Tesla. These types of products are low-hanging fruit for people with 0 initial capital.

>Assuming that a startup's early state is little indication of what it eventually turns into, why would somebody invest in any one over another?

Engagement and growth.

Re: Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

#77

Post by yixizhang »

rickhanlonii wrote: post #74
code_duck wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I can figure out is why more hasn't been made of how the snapchat app doesn't delete viewed photos at all: it stores them in the phone permanently. http://m.ksl.com/index/story/sid/25106057?mobile_direct=y http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/partner-zone-infose... Seems to me like a massive breach of trust which defies the entire claim of the app.

I was confused by this for awhile until I started hanging around a group of people who use SnapChat almost as much as texting. For the most part they share innocuous "here's what I'm doing" type photos. They use SnapChat because it's a really easy to send a photo to everyone on their list at the same time individually when they want to share a photo of what they're doing at that moment, with no feed or wall or commen…

Thank god, finally some one explained it to me. I'm so released now.

Re: Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

#78

Post by hbags »

kyro wrote: post #62
001sky wrote: post #3

Where does media punditry get off on making absolutist calls for heads to "roll"? I mean, imaging if random non-experts had a journalist fired for every failed-prediction or embarrasingly wrong policy analysis penned in an op-ed? There would be no journalists left !

Journalists for the most part are attention-whoring nobodies with no expertise in any particular subject, who hide behind overly aggressive and opinionated words. Watch pundits on any news channel, or read any massively circulated news source and it's pretty clear to confirm what I'm saying. They jiggle their jowls with such empty emotion and intensity. May be harsh, but I think it's pretty accurate.

Punditry is not journalism. Journalism is not punditry.

That said, I find it morally repugnant that 001sky seems to want to quash the right of either to engage in public speech, simply because said speech calls some entrepreneur's credentials into question. It's fine for any person (be they a research-oriented journalist or a bloviating pundit) to raise these sorts of questions, even if I think their position is weak and a tad ridiculous.

If you, as an entrepreneur, are too weak to handle public scrutiny (including scrutiny from people who are quite unlike yourself), then you should find another line of work.

Re: Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

#79

Post by CodeMage »

jimsilverman wrote: post #36

i'm shocked by the comments here. it was a massive and anticipated security flaw. the CEO's reaction was not to fix it, not to apologize, but to arrogantly lie about the severity of the threat. less than a week after the CEO deemed the attack theoretical, it happened. the CEO's reaction was not to fix it, not to apologize, but to offer an opt-out after the damage had been done. not sure why snapchat is getting a free…

Apparently, it's because a lot of HN commenters think that this kind of behavior is okay, because -- and I quote -- "he created an apparently billion+ dollar company almost overnight."

It's the same "high court, low court" inequality dynamics we see in the rest of the society, but this time in disguise of meritocracy.

Re: Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

#80

Post by boomzilla »

Crito wrote: post #64
rokhayakebe wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently heard Sarah Lacy say they ensure their writers do not know the pageview count.

Presumably they still reward good performance though, so writers are still incentivized to attempt to get good pageviews, even if they cannot know the exact numbers themselves (and they can probably get reasonable estimates by watching mentions in social media)

Page view is just a proxy for reader engagement. There are other, better metrics that measure engagement.
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