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Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

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Re: Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

#81

Post by jtbigwoo »

cortesoft wrote: post #70
spamizbad wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a meritocracy to work there must be consequences for both good and bad actions. A pundit's merit is judged by their page views; not by their correctness. Their salary is based off their readership. If their readership wants to be fed convenient lies that reenforce their world view that's their perogative.

And a CEO's merit is judged by their company's market value. Has this hurt their market cap?

That's the interesting thing about non-public companies from management's perspective. There's no direct way for the public or journalists to really tell if they're succeeding.

The best way to know would be to ask Google if they'd still offer $4 billion. I suspect they'd make a lower offer right now, but it's hard to tell.

Re: Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

#82

Post by rspeer »

jimsilverman wrote: post #72
jkelsey wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That was a non sequitur, and basically HN's equivalent of a Reddit meme. Stop that.

Re: Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

#83

Post by code_duck »

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…

How would that be an improvement over text messaging?

Re: Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

#84

Post by joelrunyon »

boomzilla wrote: post #80
Crito wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Such as?

Re: Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

#85

Post by [deleted] »

hbags wrote: post #78
kyro wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

Re: Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

#86

Post by tobyjsullivan »

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.

Probably because SnapChat fixed that half a year ago.

Re: Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

#87

Post by foobarqux »

boomzilla wrote: post #80
Crito wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What better measure is there for selling ads than the number of ads you sell?

Re: Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

#88

Post by bertil »

jusben1369 wrote: post #23

So the more interesting article here is "Do people even care any more?" Is Snapchat's CEO making an educated guess that his users are on the cutting edge of SN users and are already sharing a boat load of information and just don't care that much about the breach? Whenever FB makes any privacy changes there's usually a huge uproar. But not many of those complaining are high schoolers or college kids. Maybe they know…

It makes sense: I have seen many security professionals complain on the principle, but not one user publicly state they are going to abandon SnapChat for that. These are roughly the generation that threatened to leave when Facebook rearranged buttons.

I'm not sure I got the extend of the issue, but: there is now an accessible database of phone numbers to SnapChat handles, right? I get how large scale hackers might use it (but presumably already have); or how a large marketing operation could use that to associate phones numbers that they have with handles, that are presumably unusable for the moment, unless SnapChat users would accept an friend invitation from a branded account.

However, the kind of spying that worries most SnapChat users should be from close relatives (parents, teachers, exes, cf. danah boyd’s research), people who already have your phone number, and already have seen your handle appear when they installed SnapChat, and were already denied access. That breach doesn’t change that. The social discovery feature functioning as it is was the issue, and that was already widely accepted.

Re: Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

#89

Post by dreamfactory »

foobarqux wrote: post #87
boomzilla wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What better measure is there for selling ads than the number of ads you sell?

demographics and dwell time

Re: Does Snapchat's CEO Need to Go?

#90

Post by joyeuse6701 »

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…

well, I guess the severity is in the eye of the beholder, or victim. A phone number identifying my name to a screen name isn't a big deal...It's unfortunate, but the world hasn't come to an end, it's not like the hackers were code breakers of the Enigma machine, where thousands would live and die as a result. I for one would call that 'massive' and 'severe'.
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