i agree, you make some compelling points. i would be interested to know more about how big a market the adv/data piece is and how yoh use it. i was wrong when i said they don't have a clear moneyization strategy. I should restate what i think now: it is still not clear to me what strategy would support the growth required from an investment of this magnitude demands
however, like pg said about whatsapp acq, it was like taking the atomic mass of company. who are you going yo believe, mark zuckerberg, the guy who is betting hos company amd his own money and furure on it after extensive talks, internal fb ops kniwl, and access to WA books, or TC pundits. (clearly my summary, not direct wuote. was video interview, tough to find source)
i do believe still, to disagree somewhat, that fb ipo was botched. point i was making is that facebook was a very strong company (at least rel to SC) and the IPO was indervalued because of scandal and technical errors. even undervalued, a comparative IPO for snapchat would still require a huge increase in real revenue and numbers.
it is a steep climb, if we say FB was $100B and dont adjust for the interference of several problems (glitch, scandal, info leak) snapchat would have to justify real profitability and massive rev growth. maybe they have that, but (advanced apologies for no citation) facebooks revenue indicated by their s-1 filing was 3.7 billion with 0.845B users.
This is a real question not rhetoric: Do you think snapchat can achieve these numbers given 3 years?
I believe Snapchat will not grow in three years to be a one billion user company (I'm happy to be proven wrong here though). I do believe that once the ad product matures in terms of ad formats, measurement, ROI across both brand and DR metrics there will be some strong revenue figures all at the typical 70-80% gross margin you would expect from a software business. So from a revenue POV I expect it to ramp significantly and faster than we would expect. They have raised enough money to build or buy the tech needed for a biddable solution, measurement capabilities and a platform of true scale. I would not surprised if they add a third party solution a la Video on Demand for Snapchat ads to be served onto to increase scale of the platform off the core Snapchat platform to drive more revenue via advertising. Lets also not discount things like stickers etc which have been extremely profitable for companies in the Far East like WeChat.
I do expect the revenue to ramp significantly for FB, TWTR, IG, Snapchat etc over the next 3-5 years based on client demand. In five years time, all the strongest aspects and best practices will really be established by brands and agencies and the ad dollars will subsequently follow. Much of the overall digital budget is moving quickly downstream to social platforms. This pace will quicken over time as all brands will need to spend on these platforms to fulfill reach capabilities. All big brands need to be able to reach millions of users at scale which comes with significant media investment or revenue for these social platforms. We're only four years in and it will be an area I am betting the next 5-7 years of my career on.
however, like pg said about whatsapp acq, it was like taking the atomic mass of company. who are you going yo believe, mark zuckerberg, the guy who is betting hos company amd his own money and furure on it after extensive talks, internal fb ops kniwl, and access to WA books, or TC pundits. (clearly my summary, not direct wuote. was video interview, tough to find source)
i do believe still, to disagree somewhat, that fb ipo was botched. point i was making is that facebook was a very strong company (at least rel to SC) and the IPO was indervalued because of scandal and technical errors. even undervalued, a comparative IPO for snapchat would still require a huge increase in real revenue and numbers.
it is a steep climb, if we say FB was $100B and dont adjust for the interference of several problems (glitch, scandal, info leak) snapchat would have to justify real profitability and massive rev growth. maybe they have that, but (advanced apologies for no citation) facebooks revenue indicated by their s-1 filing was 3.7 billion with 0.845B users.
This is a real question not rhetoric: Do you think snapchat can achieve these numbers given 3 years?