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This is great, and I'm not really surprised by its success. The stuff they have on there now is just total, absolute garbage. Right now it's: "Courtney (one of

This is great, and I'm not really surprised by its success. The stuff they have on there now is just total, absolute garbage. Right now it's: "Courtney (one of the karsidhins) is an Egyptian Goddess" "How Much Porn is Too Much Porn" "Is this the Big L for Drake" I just cannot imagine caring about any of this stuff, and it uses a lot of data to just load the previews. It's so annoying I did my first Instagram story this week. Good to see snapchat is putting together some content that you wouldn't see in a tabloid magazine. I realize I probably sound like an old man, which I am not.

mrisoli 9y ago
I have a feeling Snapchat is set to go through a sort of "chicken and egg" problem. Is most of its content geared towards Snapchat's very specific demographic or is their app engineered towards those users' engagement? Whichever is the case different types of content can't find a target audience, different types of users can't find relevant content because they are not the target audience, so what gives?
- nv-vn 9y ago
  Well, the content in Snapchat is more or less what you make of it, and the news stuff in general is a fairly recent addition. So while it's probably a little bit of both, I think Snapchat was mainly used by its current demographic much before this content.
wutbrodo 9y ago
> "Courtney (one of the karsidhins) is an Egyptian Goddess" Did they misspell "Kardashians", or did you? Even the kind of people who would be interested in why a Kardashian is an Egyptian Goddess would presumably notice the misspelling.
- atomical 9y ago
  It doesn't matter.
  - wutbrodo 9y ago
    I know you want to signal that you're too cool to care about the Kardashians, and I don't care about them either. But it's entirely relevant to the conversation and the attempt to understand what kind of userbase this post describes if NBC isn't even bothering to spell names right in their headline.
    - atomical 9y ago
      The novelty of NBC's move and the reason it's being talked about on HN is that an old media giant is embracing Snapchat's younger demographic. Once you know that any supporting details are largely irrelevant because they only further describe what is already known.
- avaer 9y ago
  If my profits depended on retaining users on my platform, I might use an algorithm to optimize the headline mistakes for maximum pedantic debate.
- nv-vn 9y ago
  Not sure about this, but Vice's snapchat content is often taken from other Vice publications and then very poorly copied. Lots of spelling mistakes nearly every post.
- Grue3 9y ago
  FWIW, I didn't notice the misspelling.
throwaway91111 9y ago
> karsidhins Unrelated, but it's astounding how well that name communicates despite being terribly spelled.
- chii 9y ago
  Also unrelated to OP, but very interesting nevertheless : https://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/ https://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/ the jumbled up letters and words are readable, but the idea needs to be well known to the user (e.g., it's true that the kardashians are so well known that it's easy to convey the idea).
  - iheartmemcache 9y ago
    "This reminds me of my PhD at Nottingham University (1976), which showed that randomising letters in the middle of words had little or no effect on the ability of skilled readers to understand the text. Indeed one rapid reader noticed only four or five errors in an A4 page of muddled text." Huh. I have no problem groking the garbled text, but at the same time I'm pretty much the complete opposite of: "This reminds me of my PhD at Nottingham University (1976), which showed that randomising letters in the middle of words had little or no effect on the ability of skilled readers to understand the text. Indeed one rapid reader noticed only four or five errors in an A4 page of muddled text." Even before I read the first sentence, my mind does a 'lexing first-pass' and looks at the 'shape' of the text. If a word is misspelled, I'll identify it well before I begin to even gestate the content. Interestingly, I can understand I'm conversational (barely) in Spanish and the trait doesn't carry over. My spoken German is an insult to the language, but I can read it well enough to have the same phenomenon occur in German as well.
carc 9y ago
Weird, I always ignored the news 'show' but this prompted me to watch it and it had nothing that you just brought up. It talked the Barcelona attack, Bannon getting fired, and a couple of other actually worthwhile things. Granted, there were a couple of dumb things (like Taylor Swift's social media disappearing or something), but it still exceeded my (admittedly low) expectations
- bnjms 9y ago
  I misread grepthisab's comment at first. He is saying the things on SnapChat before this new news story are tabloid trash. The news segment is a relief.
dghughes 9y ago
Vapid news.
jrs95 9y ago
Unfortunately I think that is what the average young woman wants, and that seems to be the target demographic.
- na85 9y ago
  Based on your extensive sampling/surveys of young women?
  - jrs95 9y ago
    You're right, I should be a hyper scientific robot and ignore all anecdotal evidence and personal experience. I will refrain from making any assumptions or criticism of our shallow culture in the future until I have completed extensive research.
    - na85 9y ago
      It's funny that I get down voted when I'm caustic and sarcastic but you seem not to be. Either way, of the two of us, you are the one citing anecdotal evidence as applicable to a broad slice of the population in general. Seems like a pretty poor argument to me.

mrisoli 9y ago

I have a feeling Snapchat is set to go through a sort of "chicken and egg" problem. Is most of its content geared towards Snapchat's very specific demographic or is their app engineered towards those users' engagement? Whichever is the case different types of content can't find a target audience, different types of users can't find relevant content because they are not the target audience, so what gives?

nv-vn 9y ago
Well, the content in Snapchat is more or less what you make of it, and the news stuff in general is a fairly recent addition. So while it's probably a little bit of both, I think Snapchat was mainly used by its current demographic much before this content.

wutbrodo 9y ago

> "Courtney (one of the karsidhins) is an Egyptian Goddess" Did they misspell "Kardashians", or did you? Even the kind of people who would be interested in why a Kardashian is an Egyptian Goddess would presumably notice the misspelling.

atomical 9y ago
It doesn't matter.
- wutbrodo 9y ago
  I know you want to signal that you're too cool to care about the Kardashians, and I don't care about them either. But it's entirely relevant to the conversation and the attempt to understand what kind of userbase this post describes if NBC isn't even bothering to spell names right in their headline.
  - atomical 9y ago
    The novelty of NBC's move and the reason it's being talked about on HN is that an old media giant is embracing Snapchat's younger demographic. Once you know that any supporting details are largely irrelevant because they only further describe what is already known.
avaer 9y ago
If my profits depended on retaining users on my platform, I might use an algorithm to optimize the headline mistakes for maximum pedantic debate.
nv-vn 9y ago
Not sure about this, but Vice's snapchat content is often taken from other Vice publications and then very poorly copied. Lots of spelling mistakes nearly every post.
Grue3 9y ago
FWIW, I didn't notice the misspelling.

throwaway91111 9y ago

> karsidhins Unrelated, but it's astounding how well that name communicates despite being terribly spelled.

chii 9y ago
Also unrelated to OP, but very interesting nevertheless : https://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/ https://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/ the jumbled up letters and words are readable, but the idea needs to be well known to the user (e.g., it's true that the kardashians are so well known that it's easy to convey the idea).
- iheartmemcache 9y ago
  "This reminds me of my PhD at Nottingham University (1976), which showed that randomising letters in the middle of words had little or no effect on the ability of skilled readers to understand the text. Indeed one rapid reader noticed only four or five errors in an A4 page of muddled text." Huh. I have no problem groking the garbled text, but at the same time I'm pretty much the complete opposite of: "This reminds me of my PhD at Nottingham University (1976), which showed that randomising letters in the middle of words had little or no effect on the ability of skilled readers to understand the text. Indeed one rapid reader noticed only four or five errors in an A4 page of muddled text." Even before I read the first sentence, my mind does a 'lexing first-pass' and looks at the 'shape' of the text. If a word is misspelled, I'll identify it well before I begin to even gestate the content. Interestingly, I can understand I'm conversational (barely) in Spanish and the trait doesn't carry over. My spoken German is an insult to the language, but I can read it well enough to have the same phenomenon occur in German as well.

carc 9y ago

Weird, I always ignored the news 'show' but this prompted me to watch it and it had nothing that you just brought up. It talked the Barcelona attack, Bannon getting fired, and a couple of other actually worthwhile things. Granted, there were a couple of dumb things (like Taylor Swift's social media disappearing or something), but it still exceeded my (admittedly low) expectations

bnjms 9y ago
I misread grepthisab's comment at first. He is saying the things on SnapChat before this new news story are tabloid trash. The news segment is a relief.

dghughes 9y ago

Vapid news.

jrs95 9y ago

Unfortunately I think that is what the average young woman wants, and that seems to be the target demographic.

na85 9y ago
Based on your extensive sampling/surveys of young women?
- jrs95 9y ago
  You're right, I should be a hyper scientific robot and ignore all anecdotal evidence and personal experience. I will refrain from making any assumptions or criticism of our shallow culture in the future until I have completed extensive research.
  - na85 9y ago
    It's funny that I get down voted when I'm caustic and sarcastic but you seem not to be. Either way, of the two of us, you are the one citing anecdotal evidence as applicable to a broad slice of the population in general. Seems like a pretty poor argument to me.