Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by puranjay » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 11:05 AM UTC

exBarrelSpoiler wrote: post #105

yolesaber wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they are not. It's gonna be another gimmick lifestyle tech product that gets trumped up in the press and then no one cares about. They are glasses that only take ten seconds video and can only post it to snapchat. And they cost $130. Come on.

$129 is pretty cheap nowadays, you can get a Google Home for that price.

Snapchat is targeting teens and young adults with this - not exactly people who have $130 lying around

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

#232

Post by puranjay » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 11:21 AM UTC

Disruptive_Dave wrote: post #230

devilsavocado wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my takeaway from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers 2016 internet trends presentation. http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends Some I agree with, some I think is hyperbole. Snapchat's Ads are effective. More effective than anything else on the internet or other apps. They are authentic, entertaining, in-context and brief. They follow the 3Vs: Vertical (Made for Mobiles) / Video (Great Way to Tell Story) / Viewing (…

My questions re: "effectiveness" is what can they do beyond brand awareness? Can Snapchat capture advertisers who are more interested in CPC than CPM? Can it drive sales in a meaningful way? Maybe it doesn't matter, as brand awareness advertising is a big money game and somebody has to replace traditional TV (and even magazine) spend.

I do a lot of inbound marketing for B2B companies. I've been thoroughly surprised at the number of clients I see asking for Snapchat marketing, and the number of people in my industry promoting their Snapchat channels aggressively.

For B2B, Facebook is more or less dying. Twitter has too much noise. I'm still trying to figure out how Snapchat fits in here but people are promoting it aggressively at least

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

#233

Post by usrusr » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 11:44 AM UTC

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.

Those glasses are designed to be the party Polaroid of a generation. The person holding the camera gets the attention of everybody keen on presenting themselves, the bet is that putting the camera on your face intensifies this experience. Expect these things to get passed around a bit when in use, so there will quite some local virality within groups. This is good for immediate sales, but long term usage could suffer hard if market saturation coincides with the novelty wearing off. If there is one Polaroid at a given party, it is the center of attention, if there are three of them, they are all just annoying. The me-too buyers well get quite the opposite result compared to the early adopters.

If Snapchat sets up the glasses business as an additional revenue stream, it could well become a reasonable but limited success, if they set it up "strategically", maybe even selling at loss, I predict terrible failure.

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

#234

Post by Disruptive_Dave » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 11:46 AM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #232

Disruptive_Dave wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My questions re: "effectiveness" is what can they do beyond brand awareness? Can Snapchat capture advertisers who are more interested in CPC than CPM? Can it drive sales in a meaningful way? Maybe it doesn't matter, as brand awareness advertising is a big money game and somebody has to replace traditional TV (and even magazine) spend.

I do a lot of inbound marketing for B2B companies. I've been thoroughly surprised at the number of clients I see asking for Snapchat marketing, and the number of people in my industry promoting their Snapchat channels aggressively. For B2B, Facebook is more or less dying. Twitter has too much noise. I'm still trying to figure out how Snapchat fits in here but people are promoting it aggressively at least

I've seen the same (also a marketing guy), but we both know that most companies always chase the shiny new thing regardless of its actual effectiveness. I'm a Snap fan and can't wait to experiment with the ads API at some point, I'm just wondering where its place is come budget analysis time.

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

#235

Post by haywirez » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 12:04 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #29

serg_chernata wrote: post #2

When a company like Uber is raising insane amounts of money I think to myself - "ok, they're working on vehicle automation and other ambitious projects, it makes sense". When a company like snapchat is looking for 4B in addition to existing funding I am left completely dumbfounded. Can someone please explain why they would need this much cash?

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…

I used to love Snapchat, it felt like the future of communication in many ways. Unfortunately it seems that their Android app became completely unusable on mid-tier devices in the past year. Painfully slow UX and unreliable in most situations. Wish they'd do something about this as it forced me to abandon the platform entirely.

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

#236

Post by drusepth » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 12:07 PM UTC

simooooo wrote: post #132

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…

You're trying to convince yourself very hard, as you're all about AR. But nobody will wear those dumb glasses.

Those "dumb glasses" are all I hear high school kids talking about when I volunteer. If they hit a cheap enough price point with them, kids are going to wear them everywhere. There'll be plenty of backlash as schools/etc ban them, but they're targeting a market that's already crazy about them.

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

#237

Post by AlexC04 » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 12:09 PM UTC

dilap wrote: post #139

simooooo wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're trying to convince yourself very hard, as you're all about AR. But nobody will wear those dumb glasses.

Lots of people are going to wear those glasses. Is there some site where you can bet small amounts of $ with strangers on the internet? :)

Depending on the strike price, can't you just buy or short a few shares?

I mean that's a bet with a payoff & loss.

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

#238

Post by usrusr » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 12:14 PM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #231

exBarrelSpoiler wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$129 is pretty cheap nowadays, you can get a Google Home for that price.

Snapchat is targeting teens and young adults with this - not exactly people who have $130 lying around

Did not stop Gopro. If you have been to a ski resort in recent years you have probably noticed that at some point, Gopro saturation started to become inversely proportional to riding skill. Where Gopros are sold with the promise of being like those who get really fast and have spectacularly high jumps, Snapchat specs will be sold with the promise of being like those who get really drunk and have spectacularly great parties. That is a very promising market to tap into, but no way that it could ever be a four billion market.

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

#239

Post by usrusr » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 12:25 PM UTC

gajjanag wrote: post #98

flanbiscuit wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their spectacles is going to be a game changer. I hope it does well (buy also part of me hopes it does not for the sake of everyone's privacy in public). https://www.spectacles.com/

I hope not. I really dislike the asymmetry between the ability to take pictures of anyone in public easily (assuming spectacles or an equivalent comes out), with low chance of detection (unlike cameras/phones, which are harder to disguise) while being unable to as easily wear a mask in public to preserve some semblance of anonymity. Anti-mask laws exist for a variety of reasons, some of which I am fine with (e.g near…

Snapchat spectacles are specifically designed to transfer the "everybody smile for the camera" effect to the wearer. The absolute opposite of a disguised camera.

Hidden cameras (not terribly well hidden cameras, but hidden nonetheless) are nothing new, the Snapchat innovation is to reverse the camouflage to create completely different usage patterns.

If the Snapchat specs become popular there will actually be a knockoff market for fakes that don't even have a camera, because imitating just the recording status lights will be enough to get the "say cheese" effect.

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

#240

Post by kevinmannix » Thu, Oct 27, 2016, 12:49 PM UTC

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…

Completely anecdotal, but my siblings and cousins that are teens don't have Facebook, and most of their classmates don't either. It's weird to imagine a world where not everyone has Facebook, but I don't think it's as ubiquitous for those who grew up where alternatives existed, such as Snapchat and Instagram (even Twitter as well).