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Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

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Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#161
post #125
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over 1000 Googlers were cranking on Google Plus, which at the time was a Facebook copy cat. What makes Facebook so threatening to Snapchat is the aggressive cloning in tandem with it's pre-existing, larger network. By the time Google decided to clone Facebook, the Facebook Graph was already more powerful than the GMail graph (which is what Google Plus was built on).

Facebook copycat? It was poor take on Facebook. Bad design, bad decisions, bad UI and bad UX. There was no vision for it, Google Plus would be much better as LinkedIn killer than Facebook killer.

It was a direct shot at the bowel of Facebook and it failed.

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about this overall, but I have some interesting anecdotes that show the power of Facebook around the world. I've done some pretty substantial traveling throughout Asia, and just about everyone with a smartphone that I've met also has a Facebook account (excluding China). In Myanmar (aka Burma) the strict military government restricted internet usage until they turned over control of the governme…

Buzzfeed has some surprisingly good long form pieces. A recent one discusses in detail what's going on in Myanmar[1]. I found it interesting, but depressing. The cesspool of fake news, Trump gossip, etc, turning into hot topics amongst Myanmar's budding online culture is sad, like a virus spreading. Another worrisome side effect is the quick adoption of the medium by hate groups inciting violence towards religious mi…

Wow, thanks for the article... extremely interesting. Very nice writeup. So many great tidbits there, and all ring true with what I saw firsthand.

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#163
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much social media activity/growth is not human? As much as I agree with you, that kind of activity especially by first party or those related is called market manipulation. SEC and investors won't take lightly to it.

And who will blow the whistle? One person could deploy a bot army to juice numbers. On a related note, the market itself is controlled by HFT bots. Don't rock the boat too much and no one is the wiser. Edit: Would love to some actual debate on this rather than downvotes with no context. I have deployed many bots for fun to twitter and reddit. I could easily do the same on Instagram, Snap or Facebook. I could even mak…

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Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#164
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much social media activity/growth is not human? As much as I agree with you, that kind of activity especially by first party or those related is called market manipulation. SEC and investors won't take lightly to it.

And who will blow the whistle? One person could deploy a bot army to juice numbers. On a related note, the market itself is controlled by HFT bots. Don't rock the boat too much and no one is the wiser. Edit: Would love to some actual debate on this rather than downvotes with no context. I have deployed many bots for fun to twitter and reddit. I could easily do the same on Instagram, Snap or Facebook. I could even mak…

I suspect people are downvoting because it's easier than getting into a discussion with someone whose tone doesn't convey a willingness to have a constructive conversation.

Your blithe comment has some merit on its surface -- I also "think" it seems trivial to do account fraud at a large scale -- but it pattern matches against the "I can build Stack Overflow in a weekend" mode. I can only guess, but I imagine the difficulty factor going from 500 to 1 million bots is much greater than 200x higher. (As in, if there are 1,000,000 people right now on Earth who could do the former, I suspect there are way fewer than 1mm/500 for the latter.)

There are undoubtedly bot networks that operate (although we have no idea for how long), at a scale that would likely surprise me. However, even that doesn't make the data useless (especially when frequently cited against a previous measurement).

Finally, your non-sequitur about markets being controlled by HFT bots hit a number of negative heuristics in my brain.

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#165
post #75

But! SNAP is doing AR, Spectacles are a stroke of marketing genius, distributed to cool influencers, instead of boring geeks like Google Glass or HoloLens. \s Guess you can't fool all people all the time.

They fell victim to the 3rd classic blunder, never over-estimate the attention span of teens when your core product offering is on the line

Inconceivable.

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#166
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much social media activity/growth is not human? As much as I agree with you, that kind of activity especially by first party or those related is called market manipulation. SEC and investors won't take lightly to it.

And who will blow the whistle? One person could deploy a bot army to juice numbers. On a related note, the market itself is controlled by HFT bots. Don't rock the boat too much and no one is the wiser. Edit: Would love to some actual debate on this rather than downvotes with no context. I have deployed many bots for fun to twitter and reddit. I could easily do the same on Instagram, Snap or Facebook. I could even mak…

[deleted]

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#167
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> According to the report, Instagram Stories has more than 200 million users per day, with that number being measured by people updating their story or watching a friend's. I wonder what the number would be if those who only watched stories were excluded. Its also worth considering that Instagram delivers some of their announcements as stories and whether or not people viewing those also count towards the active user…

This is very important. I watch Instagram and Snapchat stories every day. Instagram is 2 or 3 celebrity stories, then I scroll down to look at a few new pics. Snapchat is a constant stream of glimpses into the lives of my close friends. edit: I'm curious if this is true only for my friend groups/demographic/principal component, poll here: http://www.strawpoll.me/12939274

Snap calls itself the friends and family network for a reason. Instagram is a mix of celebrities, influencers, businesses, friends and family.

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#168
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you still take an Uber to the airport?

I bet he does, because Uber subsidizes over 50% of the ride. If they didn't, no one would take Uber. It's not difficult to know how that particular story is going to end.

What about Airbnb?

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#170
post #59

This is one of the ugliest financial statements I've ever seen. The multi-billion dollar loss is due mostly to stock compensation, but still their COGS or cost of revenues sold was greater than their revenues. That's probably the first time that's been seen for a sizable software company in the history of the industry. They said their revenue per DAU is $.90 and their server costs per DAU were $.60...so that means se…

I read their S-1. The other problem is that ex-US, bandwidth is more expensive than in the US, even though the addressable ad markets are smaller. People are poorer and don't spend as much.

You have to admire facebook. They've been focused on low-resource Android for a long time, even requesting employees to use slower connections from time to time to make them viscerally feel the effect of low-bandwidth Internet. fb really gets that they need an Asia growth story and they've done pretty well. I simply don't see how Snap will do anything comparable given that their entire service is predicated on high-bandwidth video shot from high-end smartphones even half the US probably can't afford.

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