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This $27.8 billion dollar valuation tells me that somewhere along the line, my job and lifestyle have caused me to detach from a significant chunk of society. I

This $27.8 billion dollar valuation tells me that somewhere along the line, my job and lifestyle have caused me to detach from a significant chunk of society. I've never used Snap or their platform. I don't even really know what the benefit of their service. I am curious if I'm in the minority or if there's lots of developers like me who aren't able to comprehend these valuations.

godzillabrennus 10y ago
You are definitely not alone. The Snap product has been geared toward younger people as Facebook once positioned itself. Investors are betting that once the product and audience mature there will be huge payouts like they saw with Facebook. There is a big risk here though. Twitter has crashed and burned when compared to Facebook.
- jmathai 10y ago
  I think it's worth noting that Twitter essentially lost to Facebook. Facebook's dominance pigeonholed and limited what Twitter could evolve to. And I'm not sure there's room for more than a couple social networks. I don't see who SnapChat will lose to besides themselves (i.e. monetization). IMO Facebook/Instagram isn't well positioned win today's 13-25 demographic. The point is, someone will win. And right now I'm not sure who else is in the running.
  - moolcool 10y ago
    I see Facebook as the email of this generation. It's not exciting, it doesn't change a whole lot, and virtually everybody has it. I think we're just seeing a lot of novelty, flash in the pan apps coming and going while Facebook maintains it's boring yet stable position.
    - komali2 10y ago
      Facebook is a better messaging platform than SMS, for me, because I have friends spread across the globe that I can contact with a simple internet connection.
      - MegaButts 10y ago
        I sometimes feel like nobody uses Google Hangouts anymore, which also integrates with SMS so you don't have to bother with multiple applications.
        komali2 10y ago
        Well, I never "Hangouts" message someone, but I use hangouts as my daily SMS app, because texts come in through my google voice number.
        OJFord 10y ago
        But they don't bundle SMS and 'HoIP' any more, and aren't they killing it in favour of Duo & Allo? But with ~~poor~~ no marketing, and no web UI...
        MegaButts 10y ago
        You can use Hangouts for SMS and 'HoIP' still, but they made it a lot more difficult. I'm really not the target demographic for messaging applications, but I am baffled by how Google has handled Hangouts (which seemed to be incredibly popular and worked better 10 years ago - I'm avoiding the name changes over the years because I was able to use the same account continuously), Allo and Duo (I have never tried either and don't understand what they are trying to do). It honestly feels like Google is actively trying to sabotage themselves for messaging. I just don't get it.
        scarmig 10y ago
        Internally, how do Googlers feel about its messaging "strategy"? I've heard the explanation that Google encourages the schizophrenia with the "launch a product to build your promo packet" philosophy, but that doesn't seem to cause issues in other product lines. But the strategy also certainly can't be intentional, since Google's squandered an obvious chance at dominating the messaging space and is teetering on irrelevancy there.
  - komali2 10y ago
    Depending on your definition of social media, and if we count Asia, Weibo, Wechat, and Line are major contenders.
    - Inconel 10y ago
      You can add Snow to that list. From what I gather it's basically a Snapchat clone by the same company that owns Line. I've noticed my Korean friends here in LA use it all the time to communicate with friends in S. Korea.
  - numbchuckskills 10y ago
    The challenge / risk that 13-25 range have zero spending power. Advertiser dollars are best spent targeting the users who are going to make the purchase.
elsewhen 10y ago
the fact that you havent used snap doesnt really speak to their valuation. here are some large cap (+$200B) U.S. companies that i have never used: jpmorgan chase, wells fargo, at&t, bank of america, pfizer, verizon.
- joshuamorton 10y ago
  Right but I think that most people have used a bank, telphony company, or prescription drugs in the past. OTOH, depending on how loosely or tightly you define what snapchat is ("ephemeral image communication platform", "image communication platform", "communication platform", "social media", "news aggregator"), there are huge groups of people that have never used snapchat or any competing products. There are lots of people in the US who have never used snapchat, instagram (stories), whatsapp, or even facebook messenger (the app specifically), which are the closest comparisons to snapchat. I think that's the point.
  - r00fus 10y ago
    Have you not used any social media?
    - joshuamorton 10y ago
      (note I'm not the original commenter). I currently have fb messenger, snapchat, groupme, and twitter on my phone. I mainly use the first 2. I've never used whatsapp or instagram at all.
  - trevyn 10y ago
    Official company description, possibly useful in defining what Snapchat is: "Snap Inc., formerly Snapchat, Inc., is a camera company. The Company’s flagship product, Snapchat, is a camera application that helps people to communicate through short videos and images known as a Snap. The Company offers three ways for people to make Snaps: the Snapchat application, Publishers Tools that help its partners to create Publisher Stories, and Spectacles, its sunglasses that make Snaps. Snaps are viewed primarily through the Snapchat application, but can also be embedded on the Web or on television in certain circumstances. Snapchat opens directly into the Camera, helping in creating a Snap and sending it to friends. The Company’s advertising products include Snap Ads and Sponsored Creative Tools, such as Sponsored Lenses and Sponsored Geofilters. As of December 31, 2016, on an average, 158 million people used Snapchat every day to Snap with family, watch Stories from friends, see events from around the world, and explore curated content from publishers."
InternetUser 10y ago
> my job and lifestyle have caused me to detach from a significant chunk of society Yeah, the 13-21-year-old chunk of society. Do you, as a Linux Kernel Developer, happen to be within that demographic? Even their IPO roadshow video (which I see has now been removed) talks about their "13-34-year-old" user base, and then emphasizes the far higher levels of engagement and far higher potential among the lower half of that range.
- Grue3 10y ago
  >Yeah, the 13-21-year-old chunk of society MySpace had that one nailed, and look how that turned out for them. This is exactly the kind of demographic that is susceptible to fads and keeps leaving dead services in its wake.
  - oxide 10y ago
    once it hits the mainstream it isn't cool anymore, take Facebook for example. kids hate it now, because grandma, mom, dad and aunt marie all use it. when it comes to social media of any type, if your grandma is using it, you don't want to be using it, since it must be for old people. according to teenager logic, anyway.
    - pm90 10y ago
      Well to be completely fair, it is quite embarrassing even for me as an adult to have my parents/grandma looking at the stuff I post of facebook, which has caused me to reduce engagement there and post to instagram, which is restricted to close friends.
      - oxide 10y ago
        Agreed. I didn't mean to bust teenage chops so hard, haha.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - 10y ago
untog 10y ago
> my job and lifestyle have caused me to detach from a significant chunk of society For the vast majority of Silicon Valley, this happened a long time ago. Tech valuations have been divorced from the lives people lead for quite a long time - Snap is just the first instance of this happening to people who are in the Valley, solely because of their age.
paulddraper 10y ago
I feel the same way. Though I do have to remember there's a big world beyond me. John Deere has $65 billion EV. I've never use one of their products.
- briandear 10y ago
  However, if you've eaten food in the United States, John Deere likely had something to do with it. It's just further up the supply chain. However your point is still well taken.
avenoir 10y ago
While i'm generally in the same boat with you, i do have a couple of 30+ friends who use Snapchat. That's a couple more than Twitter. I personally don't know a single person who uses Twitter, regardless of whether they're in tech or not, which paints a slightly different perspective on the whole Snapchat phenomena for me. I also want to point out that the possibilities of what Snapchat can become scares the shit out of me. They have the largest database of people's faces and they can do a lot of things with it.
ryanSrich 10y ago
I can't tell you how much this blows my mind. So no, you're not alone. I consider myself a pretty normal person, one that can have an open mind and get along with people. I can't for the life of me figure out why snapchat is so popular. I also can't figure out how to use the app or what it's use case is over Instagram (an app I use heavily). I'm 27 by the way.
- brandon272 10y ago
  It's funny, because I find the app thoroughly confusing to use and understand. I initially blamed myself for being dumb or not giving it enough of a chance, but when I asked a few of my friends who do use it, they kind of just shrug their shoulders and can't really explain how it works either.
mwambua 10y ago
You're not alone. I'm 24 and only had it installed for a day or two before I gave up on it. Maybe I'm the type of person who doesn't need a constant glimpse at other people's lives... or maybe I already had Facebook and Instagram for that. It's likely that the same inertia will help Snap hold onto its older user-base as it matures.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
I've got really bad news for you, every month older you get the more likely you are to experience this. And the next thing you know you'll be tuning through available radio stations and find that you can't find a station with music you like on it :-) Just don't succumb to EOG[1] :-) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bewKPi9gdT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bewKPi9gdT4
- TillE 10y ago
  Radio is dead, grampa. Seriously, outside of top 40 and hip-hop stations, I think nearly everything is geared towards older people.
cookiecaper 10y ago
I started using Snapchat after they added their dynamic filters. My kids, aged 2-7, think it's hilarious to have their faces warped or overlaid with funny images. My wife and I mostly take videos of them giggling while their face has puppy ears and then send it to each other and/or their grandparents.
- pesfandiar 10y ago
  I've seen older people (30+) use it to share trivial moments of their lives to people who don't live with/near them. The barrier to sending a disposable short moment is a lot lower than having a video chat or sending a permanent video file, so there's definitely utility to it.
- sjg007 10y ago
  Good feature for Facebook to adopt in their app. Even though you can save the photo and upload it.
ashark 10y ago
The two single guys in my circle of friends use it for the kinds of communication you wouldn't want to occur in the same app where your relatives are (say, Facebook/Whatsapp). One of them's outside the app's usual age demo but is definitely around them enough that it's a very valuable app for him (network effects—everyone at any given bar has it and you'll have much greater success connecting with them over Snapchat than anything else). I don't know anyone else who uses it, but the rest of us are boring married people who don't go to bars much (and not for the same reasons if we do). A couple of the marketing guys at work send stuff out on it for the company, I gather, which is really weird to me since my impression is that it's (still) mostly used for sending clips of drunken stupidity and nude pics or hookup arrangements. They definitely don't use it to message grandma—that's what Facebook is for.
- hindsightbias 10y ago
  Not snap, but maybe applicable in the same domain - know a single 30 year old who has much more success on Instagram than Tinder. He's handy with a camera, so lots of content, introspective comments, tripod pics of his profile while staring out at the sea or what not... Every new follower brings him a couple more.
- vecter 10y ago
  The vast vast vast majority of snaps are not nudes or drunken debauchery. Most of them are just mundane moments of life: I saw a building while walking down the street, or, here's my lunch. Snapchat is useful and popular because it is a way for people to say hi to their friends without having anything to say. You just take a selfie with a filter, make a face, and you're done. This lets you feel close to your friends without having the pressure of actually having a conversation topic. The genius of Snapchat is that because photos are ephemeral, the bar to create content is as low as it gets, which results in orders of magnitudes of more content creation and sharing compared to platforms like Instagram. On Instagram, you spend all of your time obsessing over the perfectly angled and filtered photo, hoping to get as many likes as possible. As a result, you'll post on Instagram once a week, but you'll post 5 times a day to snapchat. That's a two-orders magnitude of difference in usage, which is why Snapchat is so successful.
hindsightbias 10y ago
If you have no need for integrated texting/flirting/sexting/following, it's not of benefit right now. Microsoft paid something like $40/user for hotmail, and IDK what for LinkedIn (20B?). What other platform will these kids move to? Maybe Instagram, but that leaves two big, well-funded players with ~500M users down the road. Billions to create/integrate with media/virtual content. Unless something supplants snap for the tweens, I think they've got a lot of long-term capture. Their "phones" are their universe.
- brandon272 10y ago
  Instagram's new stories feature seems popular and is more pleasant to use than Snapchat.
rubicon33 10y ago
You are not alone. I have been struck with amazement at the rise of apps like Snap, Twitter, and Instragram. They have captivated an entire generation, leaving me on the sideline. As a developer, I suppose I'm not the most social being on the planet, but it does concern me that I have become "detached" from everyone else. I spoke with an Uber driver the other day whos 14 year old son has 700,000 instragram followers and is making money selling advertising to big brands like Target. I'm not old, but that sure as hell made me feel old...
- ashark 10y ago
  Welcome to the future. The economy's mostly driven by incredibly invasive advertising, normalized spyware, and kids sending each other naked pics. It's far worse than any 80s film ever imagined.
  - Erik816 10y ago
    The "economy" is much, much larger than a few social networking apps.
    - MegaButts 10y ago
      I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Don't forget Google makes its money from advertising. And as more people grow up expecting to have everything for free, more people will bawk at paying for ownership of anything. It's why so many people will sustain countless invasive advertisements to play a mobile game over weeks/months/years instead of just paying a 1 time fee of a few dollars. Advertising has transformed our economy over the past century, and especially this past decade.
      - naravara 10y ago
        > And as more people grow up expecting to have everything for free I’m convinced this is more of a service problem than an inherent generational problem. At the moment many of the best-in-breed applications are ad supported because their whole raison d’être revolves around network effects and making people pay in or subscribe cuts against that. As time goes on, though, places where a subscription based business model can fit will start to catch on as the underlying technologies mature to the point where you can get any old dude out of college to run them rather than needing top-quartile development talent. This is especially true as you become able to position applications or services as ‘premium’ products. It’s easy to make people uptake new things with freeware business models. But as the products and services get more buy-in you’ll find more scope for other business models to thrive. For example, there is a cottage industry of subscription based matchmaking services that offer a more personal touch than typical online dating.
kgwgk 10y ago
Don't worry, most of the people buying today don't know what they are buying either...
rokhayakebe 10y ago
Valuation are not very meaningful pre-IPO I suppose because there are a lot of downside. So you can invest $1M at a $1B valuation, sell the company for $30M and still come out with $XX millions. I guess the same is not true for the average person who buys into a public company. Because if you buy at $1 and tomorrow it is worth $.32c I do not see how you will not loose money.
xutopia 10y ago
That valuation is predicated on the assumption that the younger generation that uses the service will continue to use it in their 30s.
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prostoalex 10y ago
I'd recommend Tim Wu's "The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads" for broader understanding. The only valuable currency of the information economy is human attention, and those who harvest it most efficiently tend to command higher prices while re-selling it to advertisers, who all vie for a piece of it. In this sense Snap, Facebook, television networks, books, Netflix, newspapers, churches, 9gag, radio stations, PlayStation Network, billboards, blogs, professional sports leagues and magazines all compete for the same currency and those who accummulate the most get to name their price.
retube 10y ago
Yeah.... you know I bet there's a lot of 30bn companies out there you've never heard of, or have never used their products. Society is BIG, 7bn people in the world.

godzillabrennus 10y ago

You are definitely not alone. The Snap product has been geared toward younger people as Facebook once positioned itself. Investors are betting that once the product and audience mature there will be huge payouts like they saw with Facebook. There is a big risk here though. Twitter has crashed and burned when compared to Facebook.

jmathai 10y ago
I think it's worth noting that Twitter essentially lost to Facebook. Facebook's dominance pigeonholed and limited what Twitter could evolve to. And I'm not sure there's room for more than a couple social networks. I don't see who SnapChat will lose to besides themselves (i.e. monetization). IMO Facebook/Instagram isn't well positioned win today's 13-25 demographic. The point is, someone will win. And right now I'm not sure who else is in the running.
- moolcool 10y ago
  I see Facebook as the email of this generation. It's not exciting, it doesn't change a whole lot, and virtually everybody has it. I think we're just seeing a lot of novelty, flash in the pan apps coming and going while Facebook maintains it's boring yet stable position.
  - komali2 10y ago
    Facebook is a better messaging platform than SMS, for me, because I have friends spread across the globe that I can contact with a simple internet connection.
    - MegaButts 10y ago
      I sometimes feel like nobody uses Google Hangouts anymore, which also integrates with SMS so you don't have to bother with multiple applications.
      - komali2 10y ago
        Well, I never "Hangouts" message someone, but I use hangouts as my daily SMS app, because texts come in through my google voice number.
      - OJFord 10y ago
        But they don't bundle SMS and 'HoIP' any more, and aren't they killing it in favour of Duo & Allo? But with ~~poor~~ no marketing, and no web UI...
        MegaButts 10y ago
        You can use Hangouts for SMS and 'HoIP' still, but they made it a lot more difficult. I'm really not the target demographic for messaging applications, but I am baffled by how Google has handled Hangouts (which seemed to be incredibly popular and worked better 10 years ago - I'm avoiding the name changes over the years because I was able to use the same account continuously), Allo and Duo (I have never tried either and don't understand what they are trying to do). It honestly feels like Google is actively trying to sabotage themselves for messaging. I just don't get it.
        scarmig 10y ago
        Internally, how do Googlers feel about its messaging "strategy"? I've heard the explanation that Google encourages the schizophrenia with the "launch a product to build your promo packet" philosophy, but that doesn't seem to cause issues in other product lines. But the strategy also certainly can't be intentional, since Google's squandered an obvious chance at dominating the messaging space and is teetering on irrelevancy there.
- komali2 10y ago
  Depending on your definition of social media, and if we count Asia, Weibo, Wechat, and Line are major contenders.
  - Inconel 10y ago
    You can add Snow to that list. From what I gather it's basically a Snapchat clone by the same company that owns Line. I've noticed my Korean friends here in LA use it all the time to communicate with friends in S. Korea.
- numbchuckskills 10y ago
  The challenge / risk that 13-25 range have zero spending power. Advertiser dollars are best spent targeting the users who are going to make the purchase.

elsewhen 10y ago

the fact that you havent used snap doesnt really speak to their valuation. here are some large cap (+$200B) U.S. companies that i have never used: jpmorgan chase, wells fargo, at&t, bank of america, pfizer, verizon.

joshuamorton 10y ago
Right but I think that most people have used a bank, telphony company, or prescription drugs in the past. OTOH, depending on how loosely or tightly you define what snapchat is ("ephemeral image communication platform", "image communication platform", "communication platform", "social media", "news aggregator"), there are huge groups of people that have never used snapchat or any competing products. There are lots of people in the US who have never used snapchat, instagram (stories), whatsapp, or even facebook messenger (the app specifically), which are the closest comparisons to snapchat. I think that's the point.
- r00fus 10y ago
  Have you not used any social media?
  - joshuamorton 10y ago
    (note I'm not the original commenter). I currently have fb messenger, snapchat, groupme, and twitter on my phone. I mainly use the first 2. I've never used whatsapp or instagram at all.
- trevyn 10y ago
  Official company description, possibly useful in defining what Snapchat is: "Snap Inc., formerly Snapchat, Inc., is a camera company. The Company’s flagship product, Snapchat, is a camera application that helps people to communicate through short videos and images known as a Snap. The Company offers three ways for people to make Snaps: the Snapchat application, Publishers Tools that help its partners to create Publisher Stories, and Spectacles, its sunglasses that make Snaps. Snaps are viewed primarily through the Snapchat application, but can also be embedded on the Web or on television in certain circumstances. Snapchat opens directly into the Camera, helping in creating a Snap and sending it to friends. The Company’s advertising products include Snap Ads and Sponsored Creative Tools, such as Sponsored Lenses and Sponsored Geofilters. As of December 31, 2016, on an average, 158 million people used Snapchat every day to Snap with family, watch Stories from friends, see events from around the world, and explore curated content from publishers."

InternetUser 10y ago

> my job and lifestyle have caused me to detach from a significant chunk of society Yeah, the 13-21-year-old chunk of society. Do you, as a Linux Kernel Developer, happen to be within that demographic? Even their IPO roadshow video (which I see has now been removed) talks about their "13-34-year-old" user base, and then emphasizes the far higher levels of engagement and far higher potential among the lower half of that range.

Grue3 10y ago
>Yeah, the 13-21-year-old chunk of society MySpace had that one nailed, and look how that turned out for them. This is exactly the kind of demographic that is susceptible to fads and keeps leaving dead services in its wake.
- oxide 10y ago
  once it hits the mainstream it isn't cool anymore, take Facebook for example. kids hate it now, because grandma, mom, dad and aunt marie all use it. when it comes to social media of any type, if your grandma is using it, you don't want to be using it, since it must be for old people. according to teenager logic, anyway.
  - pm90 10y ago
    Well to be completely fair, it is quite embarrassing even for me as an adult to have my parents/grandma looking at the stuff I post of facebook, which has caused me to reduce engagement there and post to instagram, which is restricted to close friends.
    - oxide 10y ago
      Agreed. I didn't mean to bust teenage chops so hard, haha.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - 10y ago

untog 10y ago

> my job and lifestyle have caused me to detach from a significant chunk of society For the vast majority of Silicon Valley, this happened a long time ago. Tech valuations have been divorced from the lives people lead for quite a long time - Snap is just the first instance of this happening to people who are in the Valley, solely because of their age.

paulddraper 10y ago

I feel the same way. Though I do have to remember there's a big world beyond me. John Deere has $65 billion EV. I've never use one of their products.

briandear 10y ago
However, if you've eaten food in the United States, John Deere likely had something to do with it. It's just further up the supply chain. However your point is still well taken.

avenoir 10y ago

While i'm generally in the same boat with you, i do have a couple of 30+ friends who use Snapchat. That's a couple more than Twitter. I personally don't know a single person who uses Twitter, regardless of whether they're in tech or not, which paints a slightly different perspective on the whole Snapchat phenomena for me. I also want to point out that the possibilities of what Snapchat can become scares the shit out of me. They have the largest database of people's faces and they can do a lot of things with it.

ryanSrich 10y ago

I can't tell you how much this blows my mind. So no, you're not alone. I consider myself a pretty normal person, one that can have an open mind and get along with people. I can't for the life of me figure out why snapchat is so popular. I also can't figure out how to use the app or what it's use case is over Instagram (an app I use heavily). I'm 27 by the way.

brandon272 10y ago
It's funny, because I find the app thoroughly confusing to use and understand. I initially blamed myself for being dumb or not giving it enough of a chance, but when I asked a few of my friends who do use it, they kind of just shrug their shoulders and can't really explain how it works either.

mwambua 10y ago

You're not alone. I'm 24 and only had it installed for a day or two before I gave up on it. Maybe I'm the type of person who doesn't need a constant glimpse at other people's lives... or maybe I already had Facebook and Instagram for that. It's likely that the same inertia will help Snap hold onto its older user-base as it matures.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

I've got really bad news for you, every month older you get the more likely you are to experience this. And the next thing you know you'll be tuning through available radio stations and find that you can't find a station with music you like on it :-) Just don't succumb to EOG[1] :-) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bewKPi9gdT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bewKPi9gdT4

TillE 10y ago
Radio is dead, grampa. Seriously, outside of top 40 and hip-hop stations, I think nearly everything is geared towards older people.

cookiecaper 10y ago

I started using Snapchat after they added their dynamic filters. My kids, aged 2-7, think it's hilarious to have their faces warped or overlaid with funny images. My wife and I mostly take videos of them giggling while their face has puppy ears and then send it to each other and/or their grandparents.

pesfandiar 10y ago
I've seen older people (30+) use it to share trivial moments of their lives to people who don't live with/near them. The barrier to sending a disposable short moment is a lot lower than having a video chat or sending a permanent video file, so there's definitely utility to it.
sjg007 10y ago
Good feature for Facebook to adopt in their app. Even though you can save the photo and upload it.

ashark 10y ago

The two single guys in my circle of friends use it for the kinds of communication you wouldn't want to occur in the same app where your relatives are (say, Facebook/Whatsapp). One of them's outside the app's usual age demo but is definitely around them enough that it's a very valuable app for him (network effects—everyone at any given bar has it and you'll have much greater success connecting with them over Snapchat than anything else). I don't know anyone else who uses it, but the rest of us are boring married people who don't go to bars much (and not for the same reasons if we do). A couple of the marketing guys at work send stuff out on it for the company, I gather, which is really weird to me since my impression is that it's (still) mostly used for sending clips of drunken stupidity and nude pics or hookup arrangements. They definitely don't use it to message grandma—that's what Facebook is for.

hindsightbias 10y ago
Not snap, but maybe applicable in the same domain - know a single 30 year old who has much more success on Instagram than Tinder. He's handy with a camera, so lots of content, introspective comments, tripod pics of his profile while staring out at the sea or what not... Every new follower brings him a couple more.
vecter 10y ago
The vast vast vast majority of snaps are not nudes or drunken debauchery. Most of them are just mundane moments of life: I saw a building while walking down the street, or, here's my lunch. Snapchat is useful and popular because it is a way for people to say hi to their friends without having anything to say. You just take a selfie with a filter, make a face, and you're done. This lets you feel close to your friends without having the pressure of actually having a conversation topic. The genius of Snapchat is that because photos are ephemeral, the bar to create content is as low as it gets, which results in orders of magnitudes of more content creation and sharing compared to platforms like Instagram. On Instagram, you spend all of your time obsessing over the perfectly angled and filtered photo, hoping to get as many likes as possible. As a result, you'll post on Instagram once a week, but you'll post 5 times a day to snapchat. That's a two-orders magnitude of difference in usage, which is why Snapchat is so successful.

hindsightbias 10y ago

If you have no need for integrated texting/flirting/sexting/following, it's not of benefit right now. Microsoft paid something like $40/user for hotmail, and IDK what for LinkedIn (20B?). What other platform will these kids move to? Maybe Instagram, but that leaves two big, well-funded players with ~500M users down the road. Billions to create/integrate with media/virtual content. Unless something supplants snap for the tweens, I think they've got a lot of long-term capture. Their "phones" are their universe.

brandon272 10y ago
Instagram's new stories feature seems popular and is more pleasant to use than Snapchat.

rubicon33 10y ago

You are not alone. I have been struck with amazement at the rise of apps like Snap, Twitter, and Instragram. They have captivated an entire generation, leaving me on the sideline. As a developer, I suppose I'm not the most social being on the planet, but it does concern me that I have become "detached" from everyone else. I spoke with an Uber driver the other day whos 14 year old son has 700,000 instragram followers and is making money selling advertising to big brands like Target. I'm not old, but that sure as hell made me feel old...

ashark 10y ago
Welcome to the future. The economy's mostly driven by incredibly invasive advertising, normalized spyware, and kids sending each other naked pics. It's far worse than any 80s film ever imagined.
- Erik816 10y ago
  The "economy" is much, much larger than a few social networking apps.
  - MegaButts 10y ago
    I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Don't forget Google makes its money from advertising. And as more people grow up expecting to have everything for free, more people will bawk at paying for ownership of anything. It's why so many people will sustain countless invasive advertisements to play a mobile game over weeks/months/years instead of just paying a 1 time fee of a few dollars. Advertising has transformed our economy over the past century, and especially this past decade.
    - naravara 10y ago
      > And as more people grow up expecting to have everything for free I’m convinced this is more of a service problem than an inherent generational problem. At the moment many of the best-in-breed applications are ad supported because their whole raison d’être revolves around network effects and making people pay in or subscribe cuts against that. As time goes on, though, places where a subscription based business model can fit will start to catch on as the underlying technologies mature to the point where you can get any old dude out of college to run them rather than needing top-quartile development talent. This is especially true as you become able to position applications or services as ‘premium’ products. It’s easy to make people uptake new things with freeware business models. But as the products and services get more buy-in you’ll find more scope for other business models to thrive. For example, there is a cottage industry of subscription based matchmaking services that offer a more personal touch than typical online dating.

kgwgk 10y ago

Don't worry, most of the people buying today don't know what they are buying either...

rokhayakebe 10y ago

Valuation are not very meaningful pre-IPO I suppose because there are a lot of downside. So you can invest $1M at a $1B valuation, sell the company for $30M and still come out with $XX millions. I guess the same is not true for the average person who buys into a public company. Because if you buy at $1 and tomorrow it is worth $.32c I do not see how you will not loose money.

xutopia 10y ago

That valuation is predicated on the assumption that the younger generation that uses the service will continue to use it in their 30s.

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prostoalex 10y ago

I'd recommend Tim Wu's "The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads" for broader understanding. The only valuable currency of the information economy is human attention, and those who harvest it most efficiently tend to command higher prices while re-selling it to advertisers, who all vie for a piece of it. In this sense Snap, Facebook, television networks, books, Netflix, newspapers, churches, 9gag, radio stations, PlayStation Network, billboards, blogs, professional sports leagues and magazines all compete for the same currency and those who accummulate the most get to name their price.

retube 10y ago

Yeah.... you know I bet there's a lot of 30bn companies out there you've never heard of, or have never used their products. Society is BIG, 7bn people in the world.