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Snapchat Hiring Massive Sales Team, Said To Be Raising $100M At $1B To Pay Them

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11–20 of 28 posts

Re: Snapchat Hiring Massive Sales Team, Said To Be Raising $100M At $1B To Pay Them

#11

Given the graph in the article, it wouldn't surprise me if Facebook made another get-all-users-so-it-doesn't-threaten-core-business acquisition a la Instagram. Although in this case, Facebook tried making a Snapchat clone (Poke) and failed miserably, so such an acquisition might show a weakness in Facebook product strategy and be somewhat embarrassing.

I would love to see Facebook try to acquire Snapchat. They were so arrogant when they launched Poke, claiming they made the entire app in 12 days. I thought it was pretty low to make a full blown copy of Snapchat.

Re: Snapchat Hiring Massive Sales Team, Said To Be Raising $100M At $1B To Pay Them

#12
I don't see how you can base a long term business model on a technology that can easily be broken (i.e. cracking the app so that photos aren't deleted after some time like the sender intended).

I guess in the short term they can make some money and transition to some other business model, but I feel like "SnapchatKeep" is just around the corner if it doesn't exist already.

Re: Snapchat Hiring Massive Sales Team, Said To Be Raising $100M At $1B To Pay Them

#13

I don't see how you can base a long term business model on a technology that can easily be broken (i.e. cracking the app so that photos aren't deleted after some time like the sender intended). I guess in the short term they can make some money and transition to some other business model, but I feel like "SnapchatKeep" is just around the corner if it doesn't exist already.

if they had a feature to upload saved snapchats online, I would do it and share it through facebook and twitter, in fact I already do http://olaji.de/snapchat a lot of my friends find it hilarious and I have almost double the amount of snaps saved on my phone right now, than on the site... I plan to upload more and more while snapchat value goes up and up, I am a 20 year old college student, a lot of you older guys have trouble understanding...

Re: Snapchat Hiring Massive Sales Team, Said To Be Raising $100M At $1B To Pay Them

#14

what kind of a mad world do we live in where an app for sending pictures to your friends with a slight twist is worth $1B? That applies to both snapchat and instagram...

What kind of mad world do we live in where a graduate from one of the top universities in the world agrees to take a first job hawking ad space for a fad-of-the-year mobile app?

Re: Snapchat Hiring Massive Sales Team, Said To Be Raising $100M At $1B To Pay Them

#15
post #13

I don't see how you can base a long term business model on a technology that can easily be broken (i.e. cracking the app so that photos aren't deleted after some time like the sender intended). I guess in the short term they can make some money and transition to some other business model, but I feel like "SnapchatKeep" is just around the corner if it doesn't exist already.

if they had a feature to upload saved snapchats online, I would do it and share it through facebook and twitter, in fact I already do http://olaji.de/snapchat a lot of my friends find it hilarious and I have almost double the amount of snaps saved on my phone right now, than on the site... I plan to upload more and more while snapchat value goes up and up, I am a 20 year old college student, a lot of you older guys h…

>a lot of you older guys have trouble understanding...

Maybe when you're 30 you will be able to form a complete sentence.

Re: Snapchat Hiring Massive Sales Team, Said To Be Raising $100M At $1B To Pay Them

#16
post #7

what kind of a mad world do we live in where an app for sending pictures to your friends with a slight twist is worth $1B? That applies to both snapchat and instagram...

I keep feeling like I've shown up to the platform 20 minutes after the money train left...

That's because you need to build the money train yourself if you want to have one, even if it's guaranteed to fall off a cliff in the long run (like Snapchat).

Re: Snapchat Hiring Massive Sales Team, Said To Be Raising $100M At $1B To Pay Them

#17

Given the graph in the article, it wouldn't surprise me if Facebook made another get-all-users-so-it-doesn't-threaten-core-business acquisition a la Instagram. Although in this case, Facebook tried making a Snapchat clone (Poke) and failed miserably, so such an acquisition might show a weakness in Facebook product strategy and be somewhat embarrassing.

Facebook already tried to acquire Snapchat and obviously was not successful. I would assume that's would spurred them to make Poke.

Re: Snapchat Hiring Massive Sales Team, Said To Be Raising $100M At $1B To Pay Them

#18
post #14

what kind of a mad world do we live in where an app for sending pictures to your friends with a slight twist is worth $1B? That applies to both snapchat and instagram...

What kind of mad world do we live in where a graduate from one of the top universities in the world agrees to take a first job hawking ad space for a fad-of-the-year mobile app?

There are plenty of people who graduate from top universities and end up in low-paying sales jobs.

Re: Snapchat Hiring Massive Sales Team, Said To Be Raising $100M At $1B To Pay Them

#19

Given the graph in the article, it wouldn't surprise me if Facebook made another get-all-users-so-it-doesn't-threaten-core-business acquisition a la Instagram. Although in this case, Facebook tried making a Snapchat clone (Poke) and failed miserably, so such an acquisition might show a weakness in Facebook product strategy and be somewhat embarrassing.

Snapchat was likely trying to value itself in comparative terms to Instagram. Instagram was a threat because it had both the meteorically rising product AND the engineering team capable of scaling ahead of that growth. I think Facebook created Poke not to compete directly, but as a response to the comparison to Instagram. Facebook "coded Snapchat in a weekend", literally.

Re: Snapchat Hiring Massive Sales Team, Said To Be Raising $100M At $1B To Pay Them

#20

what kind of a mad world do we live in where an app for sending pictures to your friends with a slight twist is worth $1B? That applies to both snapchat and instagram...

And some say there is no bubble in start-up world... If someone has any idea what is going on here please explain to me because I do not understand how we have come down to this.

There are 450 million Snapchats sent a day. Their engagement is insane and so is their month over month growth. Snapchat has created a new form of communication that a lot of people enjoy using. If we use other startups as benchmarks (Tumblr, Instagram), the valuation does not seem far-fetched.
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