Almost every single comment here is negative. Snapchat is going to die soon. He doesn't know what he's doing. They're just going to use ads and then lose users.
Let's see what you're done.
Snapchat has done well thus far not to alienate users while introducing features that allow brands to get their content in front of users (discover). Particularly difficult considering it's mostly a private network on which you share with friends. They haven't any huge privacy scandals yet either - at least none that have had an effect on usage.
It may seem like just another dumb app to a lot of people here and honestly I thought the same for a while. My generation took quite a while to start using it but now it's something we use a lot. It's great for sharing pictures you don't need around forever on Facebook. Photos of nights out, as they happen for people who can't be there. Candid snaps on holidays and trips. I don't see it replacing Facebook for anyone but it seems to coexist nicely.
Most of the negativity here is actually quite familiar. It's the same crap people spewed about Facebook for the last 6 years or so. Any none of it has really come true.
> Let's see what you're done....It may seem like just another dumb app to a lot of people here
It is just another dumb app with horrific usability issues. The fact that Evan Spiegel got lucky enough to have this go viral doesn't make him any smarter or a better person than anyone here. It makes him lucky.
One of the things I used to do was viral branded content. We would post the same thing for days and get no traction at all, then suddenly the magic combination of the right people would share it and we would have a $20K revenue day with almost no work or advertising expenditure. I wasn't any smarter on those great days than I was on the bad days. Just luckier. This is what happened to Snapchat but on an epic scale, and it's only valuable now because they got lucky in the beginning and now there are 100M users.
Completely agree. Spiegel came across as a douche once, but new CEOs learn incredibly quickly, esp when in charge of a 300+ person company with experienced help. I would guess he'll become a very good CEO (maybe he already is) and lead snapchat to an interesting and successful place.
The product is certainly in a difficult space with finicky users, but those users are also extraordinarily valuable. No way to tell what will happen, wap if you're not in the demographic.
I've seen people for which it replaced Facebook. (Not Instagram, Facebook. Instagram is their non-volatile memory, in this case.) For these groups, having a Facebook is "uncool" and "for old people".
I don't know if it'll survive, but I love it to death. I'd be willing to pony up a buck to keep it around.
You say that, but the article states that 70% of teens use facebook vs. 40% for snapchat. I'm not sure a service with a billion users can really be labeled uncool by that many people.
I really am focusing on the social elite of a small group of kids that I met over the summer. They're from California and I live on the East Coast (where Facebook is the norm). I'll be the first to admit that the plural of anecdote is not data. Which is why I said "some groups of people."
In any case, I think the difference in user population is because of accessibility to technology. Snapchat basically demands a swanky, whiz-bang phone, which not all kids have. I'd be willing to bet that more than 30% of kids (the difference in the statistics) lack a Snapchat-capable phone.
Being rich is cool, so apparently Snapchat is too. And it's cooler than Facebook, making Facebook uncool. I understand that there are a long list of logical fallacies in this section but hey, we're teens.
I don't know what SnapChat will end up "being", but the idea that the worst-case-scenario is, for all intents and purposes, "incredibly successful" is so far off the rails. How people can read things like this without at least contemplating a tech bubble is beyond me.
I don't think this is evidence of a tech bubble at large, but it is evidence that tacking on monetization onto a mass-popular app/service/site isn't always a slam dunk
I'm just a dumb 20 year old with no business experience, but my opinion is that Snapchat is going to die a very miserable death.
For lack of a better analogy, I think that young Americans with smartphones have embraced a sort of unix philosophy with regards to their social networking, which is to say, they want a service that does one thing and does it well.
They have linkedin profiles for humblebragging about their long term professional life. They have facebook for humblebragging about their long term personal aspirations and achievements. They have twitter for sharing unnoteworthy small thoughts. They have instagram for sharing noteworthy moments that aren't necessarily major life events, and they have snapchat for showing what they're doing right now.
They really don't want something that merges these in any way. The reason being, for any given user publishing content on any of these networks, they all are publishing to different audiences. I want my parents to see my linkedin and to see my facebook. I don't want them to see my twitter necessarily. I don't want them to see my snapchat. (FWIW, in reality I don't have facebook, twitter, linkedin, or snapchat, but this is just an example of how 18-24 y/os think.)
Google had a fix for the issue of audience with g+ and circles, but they fell short on implementation, I think. There weren't enough different ways to share content and shape your profile, pretty much just posts. If they had made better ways to publish temporary posts, static info (like resume and work experience), and to organize views of the site by circles rather than merging them all together, I think they'd have succeeded.
The idea that snapchat can pivot to be anything other than an extension on MMS is ridiculous to me. (It doesn't even do that now, by the way. No group snapchats. The stupid filters like speed you're traveling and the current time look absolutely terrible.)
I think users of snapchat like it for what it is, quick pictures shared to a few people that you think might enjoy it. Nothing you want permanently on the web. Maybe it can become something like periscope or meerkat. I think there's also a market for advertising in the 'featured stories' part of the app, and from the article, it sounds like where they're headed.
But their moves like snapcash, and any aspirations that are separate from sharing temporary moments? Completely bewildering to me. I fear they're trying to become something their users don't want snapchat to be.
One thing I will say, Spiegel seems like a really cool guy with a heart in the right place and is probably a genius. I will not be surprised to see him completely prove me wrong.
I like his disdain for targeted ads, in spite of the fact that this could probably be profitable for his company.
I think the fact that he's made an internet company out of extending picture messaging is amazing. As much many of us HN readers would like to scoff and say, "I could build that in a weekend," we really couldn't. He's not done anything technically difficult, per se, but the way that he's amassed users is absolutely crazy, and he's doing something right.
I have my doubts about where it can go. I think him not selling was a huge mistake and I think he'll lose a lot of money from it, but I think he's a savvy business man.
>I like his disdain for targeted ads, in spite of the fact that this could probably be profitable for his company.
I don't agree with the idea that all a company has to do is tack on ads and they'll be wildly profitable. I think that ship has sailed; the more ads we're bombarded with, the less effect each individual ad has on us. There are diminishing returns to ad optimization. We can only buy so much stuff.
There will be some interesting times in the near future surrounding this ad-driven ecosystem.
Some people with that kind of money seem to think so. It looks a lot like a bubble to me, though (and it might be related, since bubbles give money to the smart ones).
“Evan views advertising as a product, while most Internet founders view advertising as a necessary evil.”
Snapchat may have overestimated the pull it has with advertisers. It started its program by charging about $100 per 1,000 views, or more than $750,000 for a day-long campaign, more than double the rates of YouTube or Hulu. Other companies have balked at ponying up for ads on a service that still lacks some of the basic targeting and measurement tools now standard in digital advertising.
This month the company announced it would start to charge $20 per 1,000 views. The company declined to say where prices started.
PG's "What Microsoft is the Altair Basic of?" applies really well to Snapchat.
They aren't going to be "the next generation Viacom", but they are truly going to disrupt the entertainnment industry.
Advertising is something necessary in the capitalist system, advertising won't disappear anytime soon. The aggregate value comes when it's blended to the UX through smoother mechanisms. That's Snapchat's philosophy and a lot of other companies will opt for that philosophy as well.
330 employees? Am I correct in guessing most of them are in sales? I know Twitter has thousands so 330 is relatively few, but that seems like an awful lot of people.
Also, the explanation for why they don't label buttons is "it's something new"? And that engineers are busy making new products? Is this bad editing or reading comprehension, or ?
Large venture-backed companies tend not to hesitate in hiring people. You got engineering teams (frontend, backend, mobile, QA, other), design teams, devops teams, marketing, sales, bizdev, support, hr, management, etc.
Their big revenue concept is vertical video for commercials. That's not too impressive.
There's a life cycle for social networks:
- New cool thing, but no monetization.
- Big growth.
- Ads and spyware added.
- Growth slows.
- More ads added to boost revenue.
- Growth stops.
- More ads, more tracking.
- Users leave.
- Collapse.
AOL, Geocities, Orkut, and Myspace have already completed their life cycle.
Facebook and Twitter are at "More ads added to boost revenue", and entering the "growth stops" phase.
(Focusing on cool can backfire. Coca-Cola has that problem. While frantically advertising and changing their packaging, their product quality has dropped. They once worked hard to get expired product out of stores and checked drink dispensers for over-diluting their product. They don't bother any more, and their products taste like crap about half the time.)
if facebook is at a growth stops phase, it's possible it's because they've almost saturated their target market. They have something like 1.5 billion users. That's Billion, with a B. How many of those dead services you mentioned ever had 1.5 billion users?
Can someone summarize the plan that was revealed in this article? I'm far too impatient to read the entire article. Is it the "we'll serve branded ads" approach that we've heard about already? Not quite a reveal if that's the case, as I'm fairly certain I found the ads on my own in the app already.
Cool app, though. Lots of fun. Snapchat's basically replaced texting for the average-to-cooler kids at my high school. It used to be that the "cool kids" would have unlimited texting, but now they just use Snapchat. I wonder what they'll come up with next.
The title is misleading. He doesn't reveal any secret plans here, he simply "reveals" that he plans to turn it into a real business. Not exactly newsworthy.
tl;dr: Evan Spiegel stole an idea for disappearing photos from a frat brother and hit the viral lottery with it. He now hopes to monetize without alienating his large and fickle userbase, but advertisers are thus far unimpressed with the results.
Jesus, ads are again apparently the solution to everything... No, snapchat is not going to replace tv ads for example, even though pimple faced teens use it to send belfies.
But come on, are all these "startups" only capable of being yet another ad platform?
Whatsapp was revolutionary as they had no ads and actually made money by, gasp, charging the users for an excellent service (at a very reasonable price).
"He’s also incredibly secretive about his business plans and an unknown (and arguably underestimated) figure in the intersecting gossip circles of Silicon Valley and Hollywood. "
He's not "secretive". He doesn't have one. His plan (or lack of) was to get as many people using the app as possible and then scramble to try to monetize it.
The issue, like every other person with a company like this, is that if there is even a hint of commercialization, the users will jump to the next "cool" thing.
Reddit is having the same problem. The original founders were lucky in that it was bought out and they got their payout.
> The issue, like every other person with a company like this, is that if there is even a hint of commercialization, the users will jump to the next "cool" thing.
Facebook pays its bills via selling ads, which is not the same as selling data. Snapchat can do same - I'm sure they have plenty of resources to help them do this, and Twitter is an example of a company with a similar user base that makes money. My point is that monetization does not necessarily lead to failure as you had asserted.
"Twitter is an example of a company with a similar user base"
Twitter has professionals and many people over the age of 18, so the user base is much different. Facebook is the same. My Mom and Dad are both on Facebook. If you notice, Facebook started becoming profitable when the moved outside of Universities.
Snapchat is mostly students and teenagers. I'm 38 and neither I nor any of my friends have ever used Snapchat (Most wouldn't even know what it is and I only know because I'm interested in Startups).
My point is that if you have no chance of moving outside of the student/teenager demographic with an app like this, it will be very difficult to monetize.
There was a point when Facebook and Twitter were both almost exclusively used by students and teenagers. 6 months ago, I would never imagine having a snapchat, "because I don't need to send dick pics to anyone and if I did, I wouldn't rely on an app to automatically delete it." Yet for the past 6 months, it's slowly become the social network that I use more than any of the others. It's fundamentally changed the way I interact with my friends. And now, I've been seeing an increase in the amount of people "snaping mom and dad."
This has all of the chance in the world to move out of its current demographic, it'll just take time.
Facebook: Everybody (my parents are on Facebook)
Instagram: Same as above
Twitter: Professionals, businesses, everybody
Linkedin: Professionals of all ages. They also make money through recruiters and anyone else interested potential employees
Teenagers and Students mostly use snapchat. Unless they can break out of this demographic (which all of the above were able to do), they will have a very difficult time making money.
Chat is historically very difficult to monetize. I'm not sure if you are old enough to remember ICQ messenger. It was the #1 app download on Cnet and I think they hit 1 billion downloads. Since they never had a business plan in the beginning, they scrambled to come up with a way to make money like charging for a pro account and some advertising.
> Reddit is having the same problem. The original founders were lucky in that it was bought out and they got their payout.
How is it having the same problem? I think it still has a decent shot at monetizing. And, I don't think it's going anywhere soon... it's like Facebook in its class, it's too entrenched, people are not going to move on to the next thing so easily. I don't even know any serious contender to Reddit.
We run a reddit alternative/competitor at http://snapzu.com and we've been mentioned a few times recently in reddit threads mentioning the whole Ellen Pao censoring debacle.
As you can imagine, it's actually quite tough getting a community off the ground, but we managed to get just under 10,000 members in around 2 years, and it's just speeding up as demand goes up and as word spreads of an alternative to go to.
The problem reddit is having is that they grew up (over 10 years) as a free-speech platform, and just recently changed their policy that promotes "safe places", essentially censoring any free-speech that they consider "harassment". This is literally a licence to be able to mute (shadow ban) anyone that steps up against them. People are getting really fed up. It's actually quite interesting to see how all of this unfolds.
There isn't much in the way of entrenchment at reddit. It relies on a constant flow of new material to remain engaging. It's not like users stick around to read years-old topics in any great quantity.
Basically it could be replaced really, really quickly. A mass of users is no particular guarantee when you don't bring anything fundamentally unique to the table, and all reddit really does at core is build forums around the content of others.
"I don't even know any serious contender to Reddit."
Everyone is staying on Reddit, but they aren't interested in seeing ads or paying money for most things. The only reason it's lasted as long as it has is because it's owned by a much larger company that can cover the losses until it can actually turn a profit.
You would think that a company getting millions of visitors per month would be able to turn a profit or at least break even. They've been scrambling over the past couple of years to turn a profit and still can't figure out a working business model.
"t's like Facebook in its class, it's too entrenched, people are not going to move on to the next thing so easily"
I remember people telling me the same thing about Myspace.
I think a lot is somewhat of an overstatement. When I've looked at voat it seems to be just reposts from reddit and things that explicitly trash reddit. Voat's identity at this point is something like SASS was for somethingawful, it's just an offsite snark board about reddit things without much of a culture of its own.
I don't think it would be bad if it took off but the fraction of reddit users who actually care about reddit meta-drama(pao stuff, gamergate stuff, the new harassment policy, the "SJW cartel"/SRS running reddit, 'extreme free speech' and hate subs, etc) doesn't seem significant enough to really mess with the inertia of reddit's huge casual appeal. They'd have to do something that fundamentally wrecked the ux for a large proportion of users a la Digg imo.
At the same time reddit goes down ALL the time and I'm not a sysadmin, but we don't see that with other similarly large sites as much, I guess it's cause they're comparatively poor? I can't imagine the architecture at this point is somehow unscalable, it seems like a pretty simple system besides the scale(famous last words I guess).
edit: right now the word "reddit" appears on the frontpage of voat.co 10 times
Voat is mostly being promoted by racists who are upset that they're being banned from the default subs for posting hate speech there.
It says a lot when Voat's most vocal supporters on reddit are the populations of /r/coontown, /r/conspiracy, and /r/antipozi (all very, very NSFL). The first is an anti-black sub, the second is an antisemitic sub (yes, antisemitic: everyone should read /r/isrconspiracyracist and /r/topmindsofreddit), and the third is a Neo-Nazi sub.
Really? There was a lot of hype around Meerkat and Periscope for what felt like a weekend, and it has all but disappeared. I hated on Snapchat for awhile, but they have a very good audience now. Snapchat may very well fade out amongst teens and something new and shiny will grab their attention, but they seem to be doing pretty well. If their plans work out we could see some impressive numbers coming from them, whilst retaining their target demographic.
Snapchat vs Meerkat/Periscope is an apples and oranges conparison. The latter apps are primarily used for broadcasting to the public, while the former is primarily used for communicating privately between friends. They can co-exist, however based on the app charts, Meerkat is already dead.
Meerkat is treading water, and due to the higher burn rate of 1-to-many video, even with $11M funding it will die out quickly.
Periscope is doing better but not enough to justify a $100M acquisition.
The spike is due to the piracy of the Mayweather boxing fight: if piracy becomes the sole use case and gets even more attention from content providers, both die immediately from the resulting lawsuits.
Well, not that I think video streaming services are going to go anywhere, but YouTube was primarily used for pirated content when it first came out too.
Let's see what you're done.
Snapchat has done well thus far not to alienate users while introducing features that allow brands to get their content in front of users (discover). Particularly difficult considering it's mostly a private network on which you share with friends. They haven't any huge privacy scandals yet either - at least none that have had an effect on usage.
It may seem like just another dumb app to a lot of people here and honestly I thought the same for a while. My generation took quite a while to start using it but now it's something we use a lot. It's great for sharing pictures you don't need around forever on Facebook. Photos of nights out, as they happen for people who can't be there. Candid snaps on holidays and trips. I don't see it replacing Facebook for anyone but it seems to coexist nicely.
Most of the negativity here is actually quite familiar. It's the same crap people spewed about Facebook for the last 6 years or so. Any none of it has really come true.
Sorry for the rant.