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Snapchat’s product is booming

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Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#71
post #66

I wonder how many people here are aware of Snapchat's thriving underground OnlyFans-like ecosystem. I also wonder how much of that is driving Snap's user metrics. As far back as 2014, I remember there being a huge ecosystem of "premium" snaps (sometimes known as "prem(ium) girls"), whereby you would pay the account owner a one time or recurring fee for access to a "premium" snapchat account where the owner posts nude…

Some other things to mention: the premium content is almost exclusively in the form of stories, which disappear after 24 hours of course. Sometimes creators offer extra services at an additional fee or if you buy a lifetime membership or whatnot (duck/face rates, custom photos/videos, phone calls, etc), all of which go through the Snap app. Some even have a menu which they re-post on their stories daily ($20 for a custom 3 minute video, $10 for a 5 minute phone call, etc, etc). Sometimes these are also sold as "packages". Photo/video archives in the form of links to folders on mega.nz and similar websites are other assets commonly sold this way.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#73
post #31

Millennials, the first generation to grow up with social media, loved broadcasting their lives. Gen Y was more ambivalent. Gen Z kind of hates it. Wait, what? I thought Gen Y was the placeholder name until Millennial stuck. greatest, lost, boomer, gen X, millennial, gen Z

There's a pretty wide gap between the "older Millennials" and the "younger Millennials" which I would assume is what they were trying to address by using "Gen Y" to refer to the younger ones. Although I've never heard that before.

I've never heard it either but the definition of millennial is like 20 years of births which all had vastly different experiences.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#74

I really don't buy this. Almost all of my friends, who were prolific snap users in college, have converted away to instagram. Stories are so dead, and despite adding people most of my stories get the same ~15-20 views per 24 hours period. That's all very anecdotal, and so is my next point: I get a new bot or porn spam account adding me once or twice a week, some of which have large karma counts indicating they've bee…

> Almost all of my friends, who were prolific snap users in college, have converted away to instagram.

Anecdotes are not evidence. Is this what it has come to just to make a 'point'?

> So yes all of that is anecdotal but I suspect the bots I'm seeing are just the tip of the iceberg of what is actually making up the growing userbase of the app. Most of the young'ns appear to be on tiktok these days anyways.

Some social networks have more bots than others. Especially more bots if the product is available as a web page unlike an app-based product which the barrier is higher. Given the security there, I doubt that there are millions of bots actively posing as users on Snapchat, verses the ones anyone encounters on Twitter, TikTok and Instagram.

The kids these days are also certainly using TikTok, but clearly that has been banned in some countries. Take India for example, which Snapchat seems to be thriving there. [0]

Regardless, I don't like or use either of these products since they are both essentially digital addictive drugs companies manipulating people on what is seen and unseen on their platforms. But I don't see how 'anecdotes' from anyone here hold true when the numbers from the earnings say otherwise. [1][2]

[0] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/snap-hi...

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/20/snap-reaches-500-million-mon...

[2] https://ca.movies.yahoo.com/snapchat-growing-faster-facebook...

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#75
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get the flowery speak for a platform that is objectively the world's largest distributor of cp.

source on that? i don't want to search those terms

It's an ephemeral photo-based private messaging platform popular amongst teenagers. I have zero doubt that it's carrying a ton of underage illicit content, but most of it is probably being made and consumed by teenagers themselves. Still a legal nightmare for Snapchat.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#76
post #9

What I've noticed in the past two years... my daughters friends mother had it on her phone, her daughter showed my daughter the app when we were having lunch. They were trying on 'masks' and various filters. The kids get a real kick out of it, and taking pictures of the adults. My wife installed it on her phone, and likewise when we have met other families the kids have done the same. It's not used for any messaging…

I find Snapchat app to very complicated and cluttered. I guess it's just me. FB has almost cloned Snap's features into Messenger and Insta. So, do you think - Snap's UX is still far better?

You have to remember the target audience. When they first launched, their app was extremely unintuitive, to the point that it was very regular for someone to show their friends some feature they had just discovered. But that was part of what made it fun: Snap straddles the space between social media and toy in a pretty aggressive way.

And their primary audience of teenagers to young adults eats that up. Hell, it being baffling to "old people" was half the appeal.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#77

I really don't buy this. Almost all of my friends, who were prolific snap users in college, have converted away to instagram. Stories are so dead, and despite adding people most of my stories get the same ~15-20 views per 24 hours period. That's all very anecdotal, and so is my next point: I get a new bot or porn spam account adding me once or twice a week, some of which have large karma counts indicating they've bee…

I’m a big fan of Snapchat. I use it as a messaging app to keep up with a handful of close friends (edit: I am a late-20s male, for context).

I have Instagram, TikTok, and the rest, but Snap is truly and unironically my favorite social media platform out there - bar none.

The “disappearing-as-default” messaging, filters, snap map make it a fun, casual messaging app.

The lack of public profiles, of “likes”, of “discoverability” makes the app feel genuine. Few people are trying to be “Snapchat influencers.”

It’s just nice (esp. in comparison to Meta’s platforms) and I wish more people felt that way.

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#78
post #59

Social media has low barriers to entry. Several new entrants have grown super-fast and have overtaken incumbents. Facebook was very clever to identify and buy up some of these fast-growing new entrants. This holds lessons for the people who want free speech in social media. There are at least 10 social media apps/sites that say they practice what Elon Musk says should be the norm: Anything legal is allowable speech o…

Nobody's willing to pay for the access to use the product and if you want to be the free speech wing of the free speech blah blah them you're going to get popular backlash from people and most notably potential advertisers dollars. I feel like investors have lived through too many years of bad #metoo publicity to turn a blind eye and advertise on platforms with toxic (for many people) content. If you don't charge users and you can't get the high margin ad revenues, who's supporting your unicorn company that just may luck out and dislodge a small segment of the social media landscapes?

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#79
post #47

As a user of Snapchat since high school (now 25), I’m noticing a resurgence in my friends using the platform. I never left because I never joined Instagram due to my distain for Facebook. Snap is a great app to keep in contact with “real” friends. I only have groups with true friends and only watch my friends’ stories.

My teenagers use Snapchat regularly, and Snap Maps seem to be the "killer app" for them. It allows them to see which of their friends are around when they travel or are out and about on the weekends.

I guess thats nice because its cross platform. But do they also use iOS' built in Find My app?

Re: Snapchat’s product is booming

#80
post #38

I’m not up to speed on the social app market, but isn’t TikTok eating their lunch?

Snapchat is for your own social graph. TikTok explicitly ignores your network. Snapchat is basically a messaging app with a social network twist.

Thanks, makes sense
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