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Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

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Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#201

Post by [deleted] »

argonaut wrote: post #124
increment_i wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm inclined to agree. I was very bearish on Snapchat around the time they rejected the Facebook offer. But more than any other app right now, Snapchat is killing it with users. This is a what a product users love looks like. On top of that, I've been consistently impressed with their technological prowess, even if the AR component seems somewhat inconsequential to me right now. You better believe Snapchat is gunning…

I'm bullish too, but any comparisons to Facebook are lazy. Snapchat and Facebook are completely orthogonal (the closer competition is Instagram, owned by FB, and Snapchat, but even then I would argue it is lazy to say they are direct competitors, ignoring the Instagram Stories product). For better or worse Facebook is a piece of social infrastructure and utility . Everyone has Facebook. All the groups I know of are o…

[deleted]

Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#202

Post by jocro »

anon543210 wrote: post #51
niftich wrote: post #40

I'm surprised (rather, disappointed) that the article doesn't make any comparisons to Facebook's IPO. For today's 14-to-25-year-olds, Snapchat is the new Facebook, in terms of user engagement, market penetration, mindshare -- so it stands to reason in terms of valuation it would be too. There are some important differences, of course. Facebook owns multiple properties that mount competition to Snap Inc: Instagram, Me…

I disagree in the similarities of Facebook. Snapchat is like twitter but worse. Because it's anonymous and not associated with real names, they don't have an actual relationship graph, unlike twitter they don't have an interest graph. All they really have is your location. Everything is ephemeral so it's going to be even harder to figure out what type of advertising they should actually target. Also we don't know whe…

> and the only thing they really are focusing on monetizing is stories

Lenses are big business.

Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#203

Post by jmickey »

flukus wrote: post #178
beambot wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed you could. And sometimes you'd be right; other times you'd be dead wrong. If you could be right even half the time, you'd be rich as all get out. Which is why I would suggest: Don't make overreaching bold predictions (or become an investor).

I'm right way more than half the time. How do I get rich predicting $newTech will fail?

Short the stock :)

Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#204

Post by eksemplar »

eternalban wrote: post #174
capkutay wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do facebook and Google make money? Selling ads in social network and search land. Having an enormous, religiously active user base has proven time and time again to be a huge cash cow.

The fairy ad business model. Don't know about Facebook (never been) but I keep hearing about this fabled Google Ad business and honestly, not only I can't recall the last time I even noticed one, needless to say have never even clicked on one. Some interested party wants to keep these surveillance cum social networks afloat and the fairy ad business model and overblown evaluations and VC cash is the front for funding…

You can't use google much if you haven't noticed the top three results on your searches sometimes being tagged with the word "sponsored". Unless the reason it's showing here, is an European law thing?

Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#205

Post by samfisher83 »

mrep wrote: post #171
samfisher83 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB really made it when the captured the old people. The issue is the the 12-20 years are quite mercurial. 15 years ago it was AIM,MSN, Yahoo chat, then myspace, then facebook. Now its snap chat and instagram. Its hard to keep the market since when you get friend request from Mom or Dad do you really want to be in that social network anymore?

> The issue is the the 12-20 years are quite mercurial. I don't think we are mercurial but that we have less experience and therefore are much more willing to try new things. Snapchat is way better as an outlet to post more regular things you are doing to your friends because it is ephemeral. Why? Because we all look back and see all the stupid stuff we posted when we were younger. The only reason I haven't deleted m…

I hope you don't believe that. You never know when someone saved something.

Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#206

Post by AndrewKemendo »

neosat wrote: post #195
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The engineering community is sleeping on Snapchat, but shouldn't be. My life is AR. I'm the CEO for an AR company, I speak write and live and breathe all things AR. Snapchat is poised to be the most important AR company around for several reasons. 1. They have a MASSIVE userbase that is comfortable with sharing their lives 2. That userbase has already shown an interest in AR - and yes whether you like it or not their…

"Their Spectacles release has the potential to build the largest real world image dataset on the planet" With Google (and now Uber) cars driving around numerous places to capture data specifically for map imagery, satellite imagery and Android/iOS phones taking tons of photos + videos I highly doubt Snap will be the one to build the world's largest image dataset. The rest of your argument makes sense though.

With only 100k users they would generate approximately 9BN images per month (30FPS min, 10sec Snaps, average 10 snaps per day).

With 1M users of spectacles (.6% of their current MAU), that's potentially 90BN images per month and over a trillion per year. In the same dataset. Machine vision wet dream.

Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#207

Post by Pengwin »

iamdave wrote: post #122
komali2 wrote: post #121

I tried to get back into snapchat last week. "Surely they've made the Android app usable by now." Why is the android app so trash? Why is the UI so convoluted? I want to like and use snapchat because clearly everybody is "getting" something that I'm not, but I genuinely cannot figure out the UI or take more than a few pics without the thing crashing.

Asking genuinely here, but what exactly is 'convoluted' about it for you individually?

Here are a few things that I experience on android.

-When snapchat is foregrounded my phone wont go to sleep.

-Sometimes the camera will just go black, hang, and crash the entire app. I don't know why, im guessing it could be filters.

-Taking a snap with a filter applied sometimes just takes the photo without the filter.

-The memories section is useless, and seems to only exist to keep pictures out of my freely accessible storage.

-Adding things to the images like text or smilies is okay for a single item, multiple things on an image becomes very cumbersome with you resizing things you didnt want to resize.

-the main inbox screen is very cumbersome, tap views a snap, sometimes it lags, and i tap again, only for it to show me a snap for less than a second and disappear. Double tap replys if you just viewed a snap, If you don't double tap perfectly it may think you want to swipe right to chat.

-Inbox keeps getting slower, I get instant push notifications and tap one to go to my inbox, only to wait 2-3 seconds for the inbox to update, sometimes on top of that it hasn't even received the data and i hate to wait for that too.

-Chat and text messages are stupid, You will lose messages because you swipe back to your feed the exact time someone sends you a new message, and kaput the text is gone forever, sometimes messages stay and sometimes they don't and i cant figure out why. I used video chat once and it was a horrible and laggy experience, one which i've never tried again.

-Stories are starting to add ads, which i understand, but the comic event where "the ads load faster than the real content" happens.

-If a story hasn't downloaded the next snap, the app just stops responding until it is downloaded and ready. Most of the time it will register any tap in that frozen state and will skip the snap when the picture/video is finally loaded.

-a few controls like text/drawing color are 1-2 millimeters wide on some phones and makes selecting them infuriating.

Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#208

Post by [deleted] »

samfisher83 wrote: post #205
mrep wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue is the the 12-20 years are quite mercurial. I don't think we are mercurial but that we have less experience and therefore are much more willing to try new things. Snapchat is way better as an outlet to post more regular things you are doing to your friends because it is ephemeral. Why? Because we all look back and see all the stupid stuff we posted when we were younger. The only reason I haven't deleted m…

I hope you don't believe that. You never know when someone saved something.

[deleted]

Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#209

Post by icelancer »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #206
neosat wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Their Spectacles release has the potential to build the largest real world image dataset on the planet" With Google (and now Uber) cars driving around numerous places to capture data specifically for map imagery, satellite imagery and Android/iOS phones taking tons of photos + videos I highly doubt Snap will be the one to build the world's largest image dataset. The rest of your argument makes sense though.

With only 100k users they would generate approximately 9BN images per month (30FPS min, 10sec Snaps, average 10 snaps per day). With 1M users of spectacles (.6% of their current MAU), that's potentially 90BN images per month and over a trillion per year. In the same dataset. Machine vision wet dream.

There is no way the average user is shooting full 10s snaps 10x day. I use Snapchat regularly and that describes the top eschelon of users, which might be Spectacles users, but probably not all of them. I believe that is a vast overestimate.

Re: Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO

#210

Post by Canada »

dir wrote: post #138
beambot wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Famous last words. Reminds me of the old adage: "640k of memory is all that anybody with a computer would ever need." I already know a lot of younger folks that are pumped about the Snapchat glasses... (I'm not saying you're wrong... I just wouldn't make such steadfast predictions about the future either. But then again, I don't understand SnapChat and am not their target audience.)

The problem with the Snapchat glasses is their re usability and if it catches on. If your friends aren't using them and you're the only one with a pair you'd be less inclined to wear them. Everyone thought Google Glass was going to be the future but those glasses made you look like a total douche. Hopefully the Spectacles wont be branded as such.

Not sure network effects are necessary there. It's fine if one person makes videos with glasses as long as friends enjoy watching them.

If the glasses are promoted as something you only wear when you want to record video and that you otherwise put away it might take off.

Nobody minds when you pull out a cell phone and record video because it's obvious you're filming. I think it was the omnipresent threat of being secretly recorded that made Glass creepy.

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