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The only real value of Snapchat is that now I dont have to scroll past the innane content snapchat is used for on other social networks. Im not going to say sn

• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• nostrademons 10y ago
  You have to understand, though, that most people in the world are not software engineers and interacting with their friends is one of their favorite things to do. The essence of business is solving problems that are important to other people with solutions that are interesting to you.
  • gjolund 10y ago
    Like I said, I am glad that those people have a sandbox to "interact" in. Do you honestly think that sandbox is worth $20b?
    • nostrademons 10y ago
      I think it's worth more, honestly. Probably $100-200B. That sandbox is a lot bigger than the sandbox you & I like to inhabit. The set of folks interested in technical programming & startup-related news probably numbers under 100K. I was an admin for a Harry Potter fansite in college that had 100K registered users, close to 1M when guests were counted, and we were far from the largest Harry Potter fansite. The set of folks who like clickbait, celebrity gossip, hanging out with friends, and making funny faces is a couple orders of magnitude larger than that, probably past a billion. People are very different in their refined passions but alike in their base desires. That means that anything that caters to base desires, by definition, will have a market size much, much bigger than sites that cater to refined passions.
      • jonwachob91 10y ago
        $200B valuation with only $50MM in revenue... You must like bubbles, 'cause that's how you get bubbles.
        • nostrademons 10y ago
          I thought Facebook was way overvalued at $15B when they had zero in revenue. Now they've got about $20B in annual revenue and are worth $340B.
          • nickpsecurity 10y ago
            It's almost a good comeback. Yet, Facebook had obvious ways to monetize it's data plus lots of data types to monetize. It was inherent in its design. Also, semi-proven by MySpace. What is comparable for SnapChat? Seems more contrained.
            • jtblin 10y ago
              I remember hearing exactly the same about Facebook and even ... Google. Can't find the link anymore but there was a famous article from the NYT (IIRC) saying Google problem was finding a business model. Time will tell for snapchat.
            • nostrademons 10y ago
              The business model for SnapChat is the same as for TV ads (and for YouTube). Intersperse branded video advertising before the user can get to the content that they're actually seeking. TV ads is a $60-80B business. People in the 18-34 demographic (which in SnapChat's case really means the 13-29 demographic - I don't know anyone over the age of 30 that actually uses SnapChat) already spend 8x as much time on SnapChat as on TV. At some point, that attention imbalance will equilibrate, and SnapChat will be making a lot more than TV networks are.
              • nickpsecurity 10y ago
• gallonofmilk 10y ago
  just like beauty, utility in this case is in the eye of the beholder. countless millions of people are finding utility in sending self-destructing pictures of themselves to eachother and although it might not seem like a "real" problem, there is inherent complexity and technical challenge in providing a large-scale social service that said millions use daily. disclaimer: i don't use it.
  • gjolund 10y ago
    I interviewed at snapchat while they were still on the Venice Boardwalk. It was staffed by people who were laughing at their idiot users and trying to sell me on how many girls they pickup because they work at snapchat. Those guys are all millionaires now. They don't give a shit about anything but money and extracting everything they can from their users before they fizzle out and die.
    • gallonofmilk 10y ago
      isn't that the American dream though?
      • gjolund 10y ago
        Maybe. Which is also sad.
• ramenmeal 10y ago
  What about snapchat is useless? Or is this just typical "damn kids these days" speak? The app is an incredible form of communication, and there is a reason people prefer it to other mediums.
  • ulfw 10y ago
    What's incredible and different about it at the tune of 20 Billion USD?
    • seizethecheese 10y ago
      A large and growing network of users.
      • gjolund 10y ago
        Users who already have a presence on half a dozen other networks.
  • gjolund 10y ago
    What exactly are people communicating? If snapchat shutdown tomorrow would anyone actually care, or would they immediately shift to the next best platform? Compared to say a public utility, car manufacturer, global shipping company, etc. There are real problems in the world, and snapchat doesn't solve any of them. There are real companies trying to solve these problems, and snapchat is worth more than most of them. Our obsession with "incredible forms of communication" is in reality just a VC fueled gold rush capitalizing on the current flavor of the week.
    • qq66 10y ago
      > If snapchat shutdown tomorrow would anyone actually care, or would they immediately shift to the next best platform? You can say this about a lot of great companies. Toyota shuts down tomorrow, I buy a Honda instead. Sure, I wanted the Toyota, but I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. UPS shuts down tomorrow, I use FedEx. Apple shuts down, I use Android. Starbucks shuts down, I go to Peet's.
• Trill-I-Am 10y ago
  Every bit of structured recreation you partake in has people devoted to it as careers.
• repler 10y ago
  It's not useless. It is actually the premier communication platform for emotional content at the moment. Think about that.
  • OJFord 10y ago
    It may well be being used as such, it doesn't make myself or the parent commenter any less depressed by it. In re "is this just 'damn kids these days' speak", no, I suppose I'm one of them. But if a picture's worth my while then don't make it arbitrarily temporary; if it isn't don't send it at all.
  • gjolund 10y ago
    Premier communication platform for ephemeral thoughts and images that have no value even to their creators. It makes no difference to me whether or not shapchat succeeds, just as it makes no difference to anyone whether or not you get their snapchat message.
• beambot 10y ago
  What do you work on...? (It's relevant if you're going to say that Snapchat Software Engineers' problems aren't "real".)
  • gjolund 10y ago
    I've worked on: * Liver transplant protocols * Military VR for PTSD therapy * Early R&D for self driving cars * Long range point to point wifi systems being used in Africa * VR motion capture studio used in the most of the Marvel movies * Built several prototype zero net energy homes * Built several solar concentration array in Haiti with a team after the earthquakes * Tidal energy generation prototypes The list goes on.
    • qq66 10y ago
      And maybe someone who just got a liver transplant that you enabled announces it to their friends and family on Snapchat :)
      • gjolund 10y ago
        Totally fine, but what had the bigger impact? What was the problem actually worth solving?
        • jamiequint 10y ago
          Which had a bigger impact? Almost certainly social media over any kind of liver transplant research. There are 20k liver transplants a year. You realize that social media has created tens to hundreds of billions of dollars of economic value right? Even Twitter, which has struggled has created billions of dollars of economic value. From a utilitarian perspective that is worth far more.
          • gjolund 10y ago
            Your opinion would change if someone you cared about needed a new liver.
• askafriend 10y ago
  Do you think making movies is "trivial" and not solving a "real problem"? I don't think making movies is trivial. It has a large effect on culture and really at the end of the day, as humans, all we have that's uniquely ours is culture (for various broad definitions of the term). Think about how much Sci-Fi movies, novels, and similar ideas contributed to our drive to go to the moon - as a society, not just a country. Snapchat affects culture, and really what's more powerful and impactful than that? It gives people an ability to tell their story in interesting ways. It gives people a platform for expression. You get a brief, unique glimpse into someone’s actual life from anywhere in the world. This ability to affect culture isn’t unique to Snapchat by any means, there are lots of things out there that affect culture in unique, interesting ways but I don’t think their effects can be understated or written off. I think the crux of the issue is, people have a narrow definition of "solving problems". The "problem" has to be clear cut with a clear outcome otherwise it isn't a "real problem". But I don't agree with this type of thinking. There's something Steve Jobs said in a talk that’s stuck with me ever since. Here’s the quote: “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come and Disney has a monopoly on the storyteller business. You know what? I am tired of that bullshit, I am going to be the next storyteller”. The rest, as we all know, is history. And really, he has a point. Just look at Facebook’s effect on global culture. It’s incredible in its pervasiveness. We’ve entrusted the group of people building Facebook to drive this effect on culture at a scale we’ve never seen before. It’s a huge responsibility and they have to balance it with business interests which as you can image is very very hard. But to write off something with such a large, global scale is incredibly short sighted. We underestimate the effects of these things on our lives greatly. Look, I’m not a Snapchat shill by any means. I don’t even use the product that much. But I try to understand it, and part of understanding the product is understanding the impact. Put aside the nature of the product for a minute, forget that its a photo sharing app, though that is a simplification. Think about just the scale of the application. The scale is absolutely crazy and I’d venture to say that any product with that kind of scale, engagement, and usage patterns WILL have a large impact on culture. As a Software Engineer, that is incredibly exciting to me but at the same time I see it as a very unique responsibility. We need good people building these types of products who understand the full extent of the consequences of what they’re building. The alternative, is not great. Now whether you think the people at Snapchat have these best interests at heart is a whole different topic of discussion, but I’m tired of people writing off these huge software phenomenon as “just a photo app with no value”. That’s a lazy sentiment and I’m calling you out on it buddy!
• free2rhyme214 10y ago
  Snapchat isn't useless, but you're right that there's more important problems to solve.
• ddorian43 10y ago
  1. Build apple/imgur/facebook/instagram/farmville. 2.Make ton of cash. 3.Fund real science shit. 4.Repeat.
• harryh 10y ago
  Do you never do anything fun? Go to the movies? Play a video game? Watch a sporting event? All of these are mostly meaningless but fun activities. I think it's great that a lot of people are working hard to build fun things for other people.
• redthrowaway 10y ago
  Some engineers like working on hard engineering problems. Others like working on products used by millions of people, and making that product as good as it can be. The existence of the one doesn't invalidate the other. There's plenty of room in this industry for both types.
  • dopamean 10y ago
    I suspect that connecting 10s of millions of people to each other to share ephemeral photos in real time actually does pose some interesting engineering problems.
    • gjolund 10y ago
      Not really, scale is pretty much a solved problem at this point.
• rigobert_slim 10y ago
  interesting that most of the comments who disagree with you actually just take issue at your calling it a "trivial application" language aside, you're hitting on an important idea that a lot of people are missing: 'trivial' doesn't mean useless, but this specific type of artistic agency and communication are unfortunately the only means of expression most have when there are no economic means of personal expression (i.e. going back to college, affording consistent healthcare, paying rent without going in debt, having disposable income to go out with friends, buying materials/server-space to use as means for artistic or scientific personal expression rather than needing to rely on a pre-programed photo-filter). there's an honest sadness to the idea Snapchat is funded so heavily when the same amount of money could be used to fund multiple small businesses who might need to integrate tech into their operations and who can create jobs for people who need them
  • gjolund 10y ago
    I agree, snapchat is the lowest common denominator of narcissistic communication.
• spotman 10y ago
  Sometimes though, the scale of these things is enough to make programming (and operations if your into that) completely exhilarating. Things that seem extremely trivial, like chat, or the ability to upload photos, become quite an engineering feet when your measuring the amount of photos uploaded at terabytes per hour or more.
  • gjolund 10y ago
    Snapchat runs on Google infrastructure, and brags about having 0 devops employees. Scale these days is a solved problem, there is nothing they are doing scale wise that I can't do in a couple weeks using AWS. AWS Lambda functions make on demand filters and photo editing trivial. It is one of their demo functions.
    • lotso 10y ago
      >Scale these days is a solved problem, there is nothing they are doing scale wise that I can't do in a couple weeks using AWS. Excuse me for being blunt, but this to me seems like a statement someone would make who has never worked at this scale.
      • gjolund 10y ago
        I have. Both high burst scale after Super Bowl ads and long running massively multiplayer games. I am not saying that building services that operate at a massive scale is easy, but there is a wealth of talent and tools out there to help you achieve it. The fact that all of snapchats infrastructure is provided as a service makes my point for me.
    • vgt 10y ago
      I think you vastly underestimate Snapchat's scale and vastly overestimate AWS out-of-the-box scaleability. Someone like Snapchat periodically surprises GCP with millions of QPS, something AWS would deem akin to DDOS. With AWS, you'd need to carefully setup infrastructure that statically accepts such scale. You need to plan, test, deploy resources, measure, etc etc. Snapchat has to do absolutely 0 of that - they deploy code. This is a major difference between Google and AWS - with one you can setup scale, but you pay for it, and with the other you get scale as part of your service, out of the box.
• vox_mollis 10y ago
  While I completely agree with you, your ire should not be reserved specifically for snapchat. Nearly the entirety of the modern "tech" industry is trivial social applications like this. In a sea of Facebooks, Twitters, Instagrams, Pinterests, etc, Snapchat is not all that unique in terms of uselessness to society.