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Snapchat Said in Funding Talks With Alibaba at $10B

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Re: Snapchat Said in Funding Talks With Alibaba at $10B

#51

Post by ulfw »

panarky wrote: post #50
ulfw wrote: post #29

It seems, we are seeing the repetition of the first tech bubble when it comes to overblown valuations. Those valuations aren't really on realistic future earning potentials anymore. They rather are on future expected selling price. The idea being that 'I buy something for 10 times as much as it is worth, in hopes that I find someone who will pay me 20 times as much as it is worth' etc. Obviously that can't go on fore…

Just because it's expensive doesn't mean it's a bubble. Remember the outrage at Instagram's billion-dollar valuation? Looks pretty cheap now. Same thing with Facebook, Netflix, Uber. Snapchat's simple idea is every bit as transformative as the simple ideas behind these companies. Here's what smartypants bubble-callers were saying in 2004 about Google before their $2.7 billion IPO[0], also built on a pretty simple but…

Google had a monetization model by then and their IPO was a quarter of snapchats valuation. So where is snapchat's four times as good monetization model?

Re: Snapchat Said in Funding Talks With Alibaba at $10B

#52

Post by badloginagain »

nkozyra wrote: post #30
free2rhyme214 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't currently but they will have to display ads eventually like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumbler, and the like because a business can't run on VC fumes forever with stockholders.

And to iterate a bit on my last point ... there are spaces where advertising is inherently valuable, where you have a captive or semi-captive audience ... I don't see messaging (at least in the mobile space) as particularly banner-friendly. Now obviously I wish I knew how to target the mobile messaging market; I don't. But it seems like you could see mass migrations based almost exclusively on presentation the way My…

Jesus they're going to have Microsoft send me a movie ad of their next flop.

I don't see why they didn't just take FB's money at what has to be their peak relevance. The only advertising opportunity I really see is unsolicited snaps. But I don't see users liking that.

Re: Snapchat Said in Funding Talks With Alibaba at $10B

#53

Post by badloginagain »

joeblau wrote: post #48

A lot of people seem to have a misunderstanding of why Snapchat is worth so much. At first, I didn't get it either, but I think there is one main reason for this high, and what I feel might be justified, valuation. "Single mode visual media capture" [1]. You might be asking "WTF does that mean?"; Well that's the title of Snapchat's patent which was granted for haptic video recording. That means all of the apps where…

Thanks for the info, It's the first real explanation of value other than users and being the current hotness

Re: Snapchat Said in Funding Talks With Alibaba at $10B

#54

Post by npizzolato »

joeblau wrote: post #48

A lot of people seem to have a misunderstanding of why Snapchat is worth so much. At first, I didn't get it either, but I think there is one main reason for this high, and what I feel might be justified, valuation. "Single mode visual media capture" [1]. You might be asking "WTF does that mean?"; Well that's the title of Snapchat's patent which was granted for haptic video recording. That means all of the apps where…

Ah, yes, hold down a record button instead of pressing it on and off! What a grand innovation worthy of a patent!

Re: Snapchat Said in Funding Talks With Alibaba at $10B

#55

Post by lavamantis »

Alupis wrote: post #11
JonLim wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would differentiate 11main (or any other Alibaba property) from offerings in the US? Amazon probably has quite a few people locked in with Prime and their Kindle devices (I know I wouldn't switch e-book providers) so I wonder what exactly would 11main do better?

Not sure yet. 11main.com in particular has a more "local" feeling to it style-wise. I find it aesthetically pleasing to look at, instead of the blocky old look/feel of amazon.com. I think 11main.com is only their first recon assault wave. More will come. Alibaba is the parent company for a lot of child companies -- they have an equivalent for most of our major US companies[1] It's a little intimidating when you reali…

That is a sobering article. These guys blink at a product, and their user base is instantly more than the entire population of the US. I wonder how much longer the US can afford to fiddle with ridiculous things like debt ceilings, immigration, birth control, needless foreign wars, etc., when a behemoth like Alibabi is poised to overrun the world in a decade. Once China gets over the whole fascism thing, the future appears to be theirs.

Re: Snapchat Said in Funding Talks With Alibaba at $10B

#56

Post by nilkn »

panarky wrote: post #50
ulfw wrote: post #29

It seems, we are seeing the repetition of the first tech bubble when it comes to overblown valuations. Those valuations aren't really on realistic future earning potentials anymore. They rather are on future expected selling price. The idea being that 'I buy something for 10 times as much as it is worth, in hopes that I find someone who will pay me 20 times as much as it is worth' etc. Obviously that can't go on fore…

Just because it's expensive doesn't mean it's a bubble. Remember the outrage at Instagram's billion-dollar valuation? Looks pretty cheap now. Same thing with Facebook, Netflix, Uber. Snapchat's simple idea is every bit as transformative as the simple ideas behind these companies. Here's what smartypants bubble-callers were saying in 2004 about Google before their $2.7 billion IPO[0], also built on a pretty simple but…

You're not really making me feel any better about this. Google's IPO was only 2.7 times the purchase price of Instagram? Even more, Google's IPO was a fourth of the current valuation of Snapchat? Those numbers don't feel right to me. Google also was actually profitable at the time of its IPO. It had a real business model.

Re: Snapchat Said in Funding Talks With Alibaba at $10B

#57

Post by nilkn »

onewaystreet wrote: post #47
wf wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like Facebook had a relatively clear path with already having the news feed. Keeping users on a single page absorbing information with ads intermingled unobtrusively, but with Snapchat I'm in any of three views for just a few moments before I close the app again; all that to say, I just don't think it's a very good comparison.

That's the point I was making. As it is now, it's hard to see where they would fit in advertising or whatever. It's better to look at the product as a foundation. Having tens of millions of users using your product multiple times a day is a good starting place to build on.

So apparently a mere starting place, which may or may not yield any actual profit (in an unspecified amount) via an unspecified method at an unspecified date in the future, is worth $10,000,000,000, about four times as much as Google's IPO, keeping in mind that Google had a real profitable business plan at the time?
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