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Snap Revenue Surges 72% on User Growth, Advertising Gains

267 points by chollida1 9y ago

bigtones 9y ago
A loss of $3.45 Billion for the year - that is absolutely mind blowing. That is a net loss of USD $393,000 per hour for every hour of 2017.
- acchow 9y ago
  Eh, it was all booked in 2017. But almost $2 billion of this loss actually accrued over many years as stock options compensation.
  - prklmn 9y ago
    Hello 1999!
    - adventured 9y ago
      No, in 1999 most public tech companies didn't account for stock options in that way. They pretended they weren't an expense, boosting their profitability figures. Although the dotcom bubble arguably played a big role in finally causing a shift in that accounting practice. https://hbr.org/2003/03/for-the-last-time-stock-options-are-an-expense https://hbr.org/2003/03/for-the-last-time-stock-options-are-...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- non_sequitur 9y ago
  Like other people have mentioned, this is mainly stock compensation related, but the funniest part is that they tag this loss % as "Not meaningful" in their financial statements. Just a not meaningful $2B loss :)
  - charlesdm 9y ago
    To be fair, it's a pure accounting loss, not an actual loss (of money in the bank) for the business. So in that respect it doesn't seem unreasonable to do.
- lev99 9y ago
  Companies don't die when they lose money. They cut expenses or they get acquired. Companies die when they have no revenue. If I were an investor in Snap I would much rather see them raise revenue then cut expenses or decrease loses. Their loses are considered in the stock price.
  - jgalt212 9y ago
    It's clearly not that simple. Barring an absolutely horrendous product, one can almost always purchase $100 of revenue for $105.
    - lev99 9y ago
      5% might be a little low, but you do make a valid point that you cannot make a business selling at a loss.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- CobrastanJorji 9y ago
  Put another way, this is roughly the cost of walking through a town at 0.1 MPH, destroying every house you come across.
  - nerfhammer 9y ago
    you don't destroy the house, you transfer it from investors to employees, largely executives. reason is, the "loss" isn't cash outflow, it's from compensation by creating stock, which investors pay for via dilution.
    - CobrastanJorji 9y ago
      I'm not suggesting the wealth actually is being destroyed in this case. It's a mental heuristic for comprehending large amounts. A billion dollars isn't an amount of wealth that has any real meaning to my brain compared to things that happen in my life. On the other hand, I have a very real and personal understanding of about how much a house is worth. From that, it's reasonable to get a gut understanding of an amount of cost by imagining houses being destroyed at a certain pace.
  - abraae 9y ago
    I visualise $1b as about the cost of building a shiny new casino in Vegas, or a large cruise ship. I like these comparisons because I can see them, and marvel at the sheer bigness of them.
- leoharsha2 9y ago
  Those losses are very common during the IPO year. Snap acquired a couple of startups using that money. Snap is the only innovative social media website right now. Let's see how they do in future
sorenjan 9y ago
I don't use it myself, but all day I've heard nothing but complaints over the new version that apparently came out today.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- nv-vn 9y ago
  I honestly expect them to roll it back. I've used it for a few weeks on the beta, and it's turned me away from certain features because they're so separated and disjoint.
lev99 9y ago
Snap users and advertisers have responded very positively to the clear division between user generated content and advertising. If you are not a Snap user, or if you haven't used it in awhile, I encourage you to check it out. Snap advertisers are mostly lifestyle brands that want to engage with their users in a new way. Tacobell isn't advertising on Snap, but Popular Mechanics is. When a user clicks on Popular Mechanics they have confidence it's because a user wants to engage with them, and Popular Mechanics hopes this closer relationship has benefits outside of the Snapchat app. A user choosing to give you their attention is a _very_ valuable thing. Most other social media advertisements are missing this part.
- non_sequitur 9y ago
  Just wondering why you say Tacobell isnt advertising on Snap? They were part of a very publicized campaign a couple years ago [1], are you saying they've stopped? [1] https://www.marketingdive.com/news/taco-bells-cinco-de-mayo-snapchat-lens-sets-record-with-224m-views/419079/ https://www.marketingdive.com/news/taco-bells-cinco-de-mayo-...
  - lev99 9y ago
    I meant it as an example of most people advertising of Snapchat don't sell things but are lifestyle brands. I should not have used that example.
    - executive 9y ago
      Taco Bell is a lifestyle. Think outside the bun for a change.
- nradov 9y ago
  Why would I want to "engage" with "lifestyle brands"? Am I missing something here? What does that even mean?
  - Dan_Nguyen 9y ago
    >What does that even mean? My guess is it's just another way of saying people like consuming media from companies that are relevant to their interests. I personally find Snap's advertising to be nice. It's nice to have it separate from what my friends upload like what others have said. I've also found that what Snap puts out is way more enjoyable to look at than Facebook's advertisements. Take sports for example. I'm a huge NFL, NBA, and MLB fan. Facebook's sports-oriented ads are usually limited to the game score which I don't need to look at because the game is already on my TV. Snap, on the other hand, puts up a nice collection of Snapchat videos from other people. I can get a pre-game locker room video from the players and I can get a fan's view of the game-winning touchdown in the same collection. Both are things you wouldn't see on a typical game broadcast. I'm fully aware that both are advertisements, but one is significantly more relevant and more enjoyable for me to consume than the other.
aphextron 9y ago
I absolutely hate Facebook, but I think Snap is really getting 'social media' right. There's no political nonsense or advertising being shoved down my throat, just endless cat videos and memes from my friends the way it should be. When my friends post something, it's guaranteed I will see it. There are options for group chat and 'forum' style communication, but the core experience is intimate and private. They're doing all the right things IMO (for now).
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  Snap separated out the sponsored stuff into a different section from your friends and gives you full control of the communication area, which IMO is much better than what Facebook is doing with "recommended for you" nonsense popping into my Instagram feed. There's probably a lot of interesting sponsored content, but if I want to just use it as a chat app it doesn't get in the way. That's the big advantage that Apple has with iMessages, no pressure to make a worse service for users in order to turn a profit. We'll see if Snap can manage to do it without driving their users off to the next one.
- ihoqwwieuy8 9y ago
  Just the content from people you're directly connected to. What a novel approach to online socializing, said IRC, MSN, AIM, ICQ... I forget though, that SV and places like Ycom can't resell old tech to investors. Pets.com taught us you have to just keep cranking out the hits, or they'll get wise to the hollow value really being proposed.
- GuiA 9y ago
  This fundamental property of "show me only things from people I explicitly added, and show me everything they post (ideally in reverse chronological order)" is what many (myself included) seem to want from social media. Sadly, it seems to be directly at odds with what companies want, because social networks often start off with having that property and lose it as they need to make the investors happy. - Facebook -> hasn't been true in a looooong time - Instagram -> hasn't been true in a few years - Twitter -> I think it's not true anymore? Might be if you click the right options in your settings, but who knows for how long
danschumann 9y ago
I thought Snap was not doing so well. I watch Gary Vaynerchuck and it seems like every guest he has all say the same thing, "Snap used to be great for me, now no1 is there".
- nostromo 9y ago
  Snap does suck for brands and "internet personalities." But that's exactly why it works so well for small groups and close friends.
  - wil421 9y ago
    Small groups and close friends was what Facebook was in the past. I remember joining when you had to have a .edu address.
  - fullshark 9y ago
    The question remains, is there money in that?
  - sincerely 9y ago
    It works well for medium-scale “personalities”. A lot of content creators (streamers / IG model / porn star / etc) offer snapchat access in exchange for a certain tier of patronage
- adsfasdfsad111 9y ago
  these are lagging metrics.
111_1_111 9y ago
$350 million net loss with $285 million in revenue. They could cut their entire sales, marketing, and R&D budgets and still be losing money.
mmanfrin 9y ago
The cynic in me feels this has more to do with the quarterly imperative to improve numbers showing that they've figured out how to start monetizing rather than an indication of the health of the company. The number of friends I see using Snapchat have dwindled mightily, although I admit I'm not quite the target audience (being a 29 year old male.
spuiszis 9y ago
Alternative headline: SNAP somehow surges 22% in after-hours trading despite reporting a $3.5BN loss and burning $819MM in cash. While revenue and user growth are both positive signs, there are still plenty of red flags. SNAP's hefty valuation is based on much higher growth rates and a faster route to profitability that still has yet to be seen. [1] https://investor.snap.com/~/media/Files/S/Snap-IR/reports-and-presentations/q4-17-earnings-slides.pdf https://investor.snap.com/~/media/Files/S/Snap-IR/reports-an... Edit: grammar
- manderson2080 9y ago
  $1.99BN was accrued over previous years from stock-based compensation. This is very standard for companies in the year they IPO.
pkamb 9y ago
The "Publisher" stories I see on Snapchat are invariably stories about various Kardashian/Jenner family members or generic buzzfeed-esque millennial-targeted clickbait. These seem very poorly targeted towards me. Does everyone see only this? Are there ways to get into different/better advertising buckets? Even something like "GQ" would be far better than the "People" content I'm currently seeing. On Instagram the ads are targeted at things I would actually click through and buy -- lots of ads for shoes, bags, clothing, kickstarter-like items, etc. I assume that's via the hashtags and people I follow on Instagram: cars, travel, architecture, etc. + perhaps via some creepy FaceBook magic. Without hashtags, how does Snapchat figure out what "Publishers" I'd want to see?
- tedmiston 9y ago
  That's mostly what I see in the publisher section too. I wasn't under the impression that it was curated per user but I could be wrong. I don't interact with the publisher stuff a ton.
- zjaffee 9y ago
  Yes (at least with the new version), you should be able to long click on the story and say show less of this. (Source, I've done this and it's worked pretty well).
- bennesvig 9y ago
  Snapchat has object recognition. With a ton of photos/videos stored in memories, they could get a decent idea of one's interests based on object recognition and text used in Snaps.
- adjkant 9y ago
  You can tell them to ignore some publishers and subscribe to others. My Snapchat subscriptions are NYT, Wired, WaPo, and a few others. I have blocked People and Daily Mail. Hold down on a publisher story to get options.
  - pkamb 9y ago
    In the last 24 hours I've gotten the newly designed app, and it is much more prominent now on how to subscribe/block publishers. Did subscriptions even exist in the previous app?
traviswingo 9y ago
Whatever happened to businesses making money?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- toephu2 9y ago
  That's so 1990s
KaoruAoiShiho 9y ago
Awww yeah, go snap. Right again. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15677666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15677666
- restlessdesign 9y ago
  It must feel pretty cool to be right.
- bennesvig 9y ago
  > The latest conference call was very enlightening in that it showed me how much snapchat was doing wrong and what they can do to fix it. Just curious, what did you think they were doing wrong and needed to fix?
jknoepfler 9y ago
why does every post about Snap seem to fill up with (what sounds like) astroturf? This comment section has at least five undisclosed Snap marketers posting and and voting in it or I'm a llama. Multiple comments in the top comment chain sound like a PM's cocktail party talking points.
- nemothekid 9y ago
  I’ll be honest - I’m rooting for SNAP and I want to see them succeed. Anything to challenge the Facebook social monopoly and at least pretends to put on a facade of privacy.
  - angryasian 9y ago
    lol, i don't know why you think snap will be any better or any better currently. They are all just advertising companies. Lets not be naive and really pretend one is really better than the other.
    - nemothekid 9y ago
      There's a huge gap between a company like Turner Broadcasting and Facebook, despite the fact that on paper, they are both advertising companies. The one that isn't sucking in huge amounts of data is a clearly better to me.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > There's a huge gap between a company like Turner Broadcasting and Facebook, despite the fact that on paper, they are both advertising companies. On paper, neither Facebook nor TBS is an advertising company. Advertising companies create and manage advertising campaigns; TBS and Facebook are media companies in different segments of the media whose primary income stream is through selling advertising space.
        angryasian 9y ago
verall 9y ago
As a member of 18~23yo age group ("young person"), I would say snaps the only social media I enjoy using besides HN/reddit. Most young people I know use Facebook for groups (local like a school or city), events , and chat. IMO Facebook is shooting all of these feet off with the algorithmic newsfeed and spinning off messenger. Snap however is used constantly to keep up with peers. Haven't met a single person that uses instagram's stories, even though its usage numbers tell another story. It really might just be my age/location/privlege bubble, but it consistently baffles me that Facebook keeps growing at such a faster speed than snap. I asked my younger siblings and none of them nor their friends have facebooks, besides the one in college. They all have snap and insta, and spend ~2X time on snap than insta. Most text communication is snap or SMS.
- SubNoize 9y ago
  How do they communicate when placed Infront of a computer? I see the appeal of snap with the younger crowd but the fact that it lives in a phone seems like a major con, sure it's easily fixed by allowing browser access. As someone who grew up on MSN & ICQ I couldn't imagine having to stop what I'm doing to pick up my phone every time I want to message someone.
  - carlivar 9y ago
    Phone is a computer. Just not the interface or size we old fogeys prefer.
  - stochastic_monk 9y ago
    I know a lot of kids in their 20s who like Discord. Slack is much better, but Discord sunk its teeth into the gaming community and it spread.
    - ubercow13 9y ago
      In what way is Slack better?
      - 9y ago
Ros2 9y ago
Snapchat is the only social media that actually celebrates the impermanence and general boringness of everyday life. Instagram and Facebook may have stories but the site is heavily predicated on pride/narcissism arms race with your "friends". Even your biggest narcissist can only "win" for 24 hours on Snapchat and from what I can see they'll generally tap out of keeping up any facades to try and make others jealous about how (seemingly) great their life is within 4-5 weeks of using it and then join others in appreciating the little things that make life worth living. Your own personal values and mileage may vary, but they've hit a niche with me.
- adjkant 9y ago
  I think that "niche" is what you share with most people under 19 or so as of today. People are quick to write off Snapchat's popularity with young users as it being the hot new toy they will tire with, but I think it's a lot deeper than that. They see the mistakes of millennials and older with social media and want nothing to do with it (and are thus nowhere to be found on Facebook, yet still on Instagram because it hasn't suffered the same problems yet). Snapchat avoids a lot of those pitfalls, though of course not without other problems. I think so long as that impermanence is the focus, and they allow for easy/simple communication between close friends (I'm worried about the non-chronological part for this exact reason), they will be a big part of the future of social media. Facebook and the apps it owns have all tried towards that, but if the core is permanence (the classic profile, posts, walls, likes, comments), they will always be fighting a rising tide. Adding stories on top of that doesn't change the core use of the app.
  - ramzyo 9y ago
    >> They see the mistakes of millennials and older with social media and want nothing to do with it (and are thus nowhere to be found on Facebook, yet still on Instagram because it hasn't suffered the same problems yet) I’d be interested to see data to support this assertion.
    - adjkant 9y ago
      It's hard data to get because people still have Facebook accounts, they just don't post on them. In order to get that data, Facebook would have to release it by choice, and good luck with that one. Do an experiment though. Look at all your friends around 17-18 (hard if you're older to get a good sample size, but find someone who has friends that age if possible). Now scroll through their walls and see when you hit 2016. I bet it's pretty quick in 75%+ cases. I just did it on the few I have (siblings of college friends). One took 4 posts to get to 2015. Two of those were blocks of happy birthday posts grouped together. I know all of those people are very active on Instagram though. Now if you can, look at people ages 23-25 or so. See how much more they post. This is of course only data you can essentially get from being young and having access to friends in both ranges. But I see it time and time again.
andygarcia551 9y ago
Great to see the conversation going on here. I work at Snap on our revenue and product features and am hiring for my team. If you are passionate about being a part of building the future of Augmented Reality, Creative Tools or in general building systems at scale, drop me a message. I'm looking for engineers with strong backgrounds in building scalable distributed systems, our apis and services receive billions of requests per day. In addition, if you are an IOS or Android (especially) goes without saying, send me a message too! getsetgold@gmail.com
- har564 9y ago
  Can't believe that Snapchat didn't give you an email address.
- acd10j 9y ago
  if you are job posting it would instill greater trust if you use company email id rather than generic gmail.
samnwa 9y ago
Hello, just wanted to stop by and say that Snap sucks.
- sctb 9y ago
  Please stop.
inamberclad 9y ago
My two complaints with Snapchat are that the app itself is somewhat bloated. In addition, I've turned off personalized ads and as far as I can tell, they're respecting it since all the ads are just lowest-common-denominator drivel
iaml 9y ago
I wish any of my friends would use snapchat, I would be so happy! Instead they use instagram stories, but I can't open instagram without being bombarded by tons of spam and irrelevant ads anymore, I just can't use it.
megaman22 9y ago
Snapchat has advertising? I'll admit, I'm a neophyte and basically just use it for texting a handful of people that for whatever reason appear to be allergic to good old SMS, but I've never seen any of it. I'm not sure where I'd go in the app to see it. I suppose it's a good thing; they're not wasting any of those views on people like me...
chatmasta 9y ago
I called this when Snap introduced self serve ads. Since then I've been seeing a bunch of insurance/debt ads that are obviously affiliate campaigns. Like it or not, this is how FB bootstrapped their ads business (acai berry anyone?), and Snap is smart to capture the long tail of self-serve advertisers.
heedlessly2 9y ago
i think people who argue "Snapchat will never be as big as Facebook" are just wasting their time. Who cares? Social experience feels more engaging. FB is better for "acquaintanceships", but Snapchat is better for friendships.
whymsicalburito 9y ago
I've been trying to get into snapchat for the past 2 months and I still just don't see the appeal. Every interaction I've had with someone on the platform could have just as easily happened in any other messenger platform (pick one of the 1000s out there). I'm only 29, but I feel way too old to be using snapchat. Maybe I'm missing something, but I see myself deleting the app this year.

267 points by chollida1 9y ago

A loss of $3.45 Billion for the year - that is absolutely mind blowing. That is a net loss of USD $393,000 per hour for every hour of 2017.

acchow 9y ago
Eh, it was all booked in 2017. But almost $2 billion of this loss actually accrued over many years as stock options compensation.
- prklmn 9y ago
  Hello 1999!
  - adventured 9y ago
    No, in 1999 most public tech companies didn't account for stock options in that way. They pretended they weren't an expense, boosting their profitability figures. Although the dotcom bubble arguably played a big role in finally causing a shift in that accounting practice. https://hbr.org/2003/03/for-the-last-time-stock-options-are-an-expense https://hbr.org/2003/03/for-the-last-time-stock-options-are-...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
non_sequitur 9y ago
Like other people have mentioned, this is mainly stock compensation related, but the funniest part is that they tag this loss % as "Not meaningful" in their financial statements. Just a not meaningful $2B loss :)
- charlesdm 9y ago
  To be fair, it's a pure accounting loss, not an actual loss (of money in the bank) for the business. So in that respect it doesn't seem unreasonable to do.
lev99 9y ago
Companies don't die when they lose money. They cut expenses or they get acquired. Companies die when they have no revenue. If I were an investor in Snap I would much rather see them raise revenue then cut expenses or decrease loses. Their loses are considered in the stock price.
- jgalt212 9y ago
  It's clearly not that simple. Barring an absolutely horrendous product, one can almost always purchase $100 of revenue for $105.
  - lev99 9y ago
    5% might be a little low, but you do make a valid point that you cannot make a business selling at a loss.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
CobrastanJorji 9y ago
Put another way, this is roughly the cost of walking through a town at 0.1 MPH, destroying every house you come across.
- nerfhammer 9y ago
  you don't destroy the house, you transfer it from investors to employees, largely executives. reason is, the "loss" isn't cash outflow, it's from compensation by creating stock, which investors pay for via dilution.
  - CobrastanJorji 9y ago
    I'm not suggesting the wealth actually is being destroyed in this case. It's a mental heuristic for comprehending large amounts. A billion dollars isn't an amount of wealth that has any real meaning to my brain compared to things that happen in my life. On the other hand, I have a very real and personal understanding of about how much a house is worth. From that, it's reasonable to get a gut understanding of an amount of cost by imagining houses being destroyed at a certain pace.
- abraae 9y ago
  I visualise $1b as about the cost of building a shiny new casino in Vegas, or a large cruise ship. I like these comparisons because I can see them, and marvel at the sheer bigness of them.
leoharsha2 9y ago
Those losses are very common during the IPO year. Snap acquired a couple of startups using that money. Snap is the only innovative social media website right now. Let's see how they do in future

sorenjan 9y ago

I don't use it myself, but all day I've heard nothing but complaints over the new version that apparently came out today.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nv-vn 9y ago
I honestly expect them to roll it back. I've used it for a few weeks on the beta, and it's turned me away from certain features because they're so separated and disjoint.

lev99 9y ago

Snap users and advertisers have responded very positively to the clear division between user generated content and advertising. If you are not a Snap user, or if you haven't used it in awhile, I encourage you to check it out. Snap advertisers are mostly lifestyle brands that want to engage with their users in a new way. Tacobell isn't advertising on Snap, but Popular Mechanics is. When a user clicks on Popular Mechanics they have confidence it's because a user wants to engage with them, and Popular Mechanics hopes this closer relationship has benefits outside of the Snapchat app. A user choosing to give you their attention is a _very_ valuable thing. Most other social media advertisements are missing this part.

non_sequitur 9y ago
Just wondering why you say Tacobell isnt advertising on Snap? They were part of a very publicized campaign a couple years ago [1], are you saying they've stopped? [1] https://www.marketingdive.com/news/taco-bells-cinco-de-mayo-snapchat-lens-sets-record-with-224m-views/419079/ https://www.marketingdive.com/news/taco-bells-cinco-de-mayo-...
- lev99 9y ago
  I meant it as an example of most people advertising of Snapchat don't sell things but are lifestyle brands. I should not have used that example.
  - executive 9y ago
    Taco Bell is a lifestyle. Think outside the bun for a change.
nradov 9y ago
Why would I want to "engage" with "lifestyle brands"? Am I missing something here? What does that even mean?
- Dan_Nguyen 9y ago
  >What does that even mean? My guess is it's just another way of saying people like consuming media from companies that are relevant to their interests. I personally find Snap's advertising to be nice. It's nice to have it separate from what my friends upload like what others have said. I've also found that what Snap puts out is way more enjoyable to look at than Facebook's advertisements. Take sports for example. I'm a huge NFL, NBA, and MLB fan. Facebook's sports-oriented ads are usually limited to the game score which I don't need to look at because the game is already on my TV. Snap, on the other hand, puts up a nice collection of Snapchat videos from other people. I can get a pre-game locker room video from the players and I can get a fan's view of the game-winning touchdown in the same collection. Both are things you wouldn't see on a typical game broadcast. I'm fully aware that both are advertisements, but one is significantly more relevant and more enjoyable for me to consume than the other.

aphextron 9y ago

I absolutely hate Facebook, but I think Snap is really getting 'social media' right. There's no political nonsense or advertising being shoved down my throat, just endless cat videos and memes from my friends the way it should be. When my friends post something, it's guaranteed I will see it. There are options for group chat and 'forum' style communication, but the core experience is intimate and private. They're doing all the right things IMO (for now).

wlesieutre 9y ago
Snap separated out the sponsored stuff into a different section from your friends and gives you full control of the communication area, which IMO is much better than what Facebook is doing with "recommended for you" nonsense popping into my Instagram feed. There's probably a lot of interesting sponsored content, but if I want to just use it as a chat app it doesn't get in the way. That's the big advantage that Apple has with iMessages, no pressure to make a worse service for users in order to turn a profit. We'll see if Snap can manage to do it without driving their users off to the next one.
ihoqwwieuy8 9y ago
Just the content from people you're directly connected to. What a novel approach to online socializing, said IRC, MSN, AIM, ICQ... I forget though, that SV and places like Ycom can't resell old tech to investors. Pets.com taught us you have to just keep cranking out the hits, or they'll get wise to the hollow value really being proposed.
GuiA 9y ago
This fundamental property of "show me only things from people I explicitly added, and show me everything they post (ideally in reverse chronological order)" is what many (myself included) seem to want from social media. Sadly, it seems to be directly at odds with what companies want, because social networks often start off with having that property and lose it as they need to make the investors happy. - Facebook -> hasn't been true in a looooong time - Instagram -> hasn't been true in a few years - Twitter -> I think it's not true anymore? Might be if you click the right options in your settings, but who knows for how long

danschumann 9y ago

I thought Snap was not doing so well. I watch Gary Vaynerchuck and it seems like every guest he has all say the same thing, "Snap used to be great for me, now no1 is there".

nostromo 9y ago
Snap does suck for brands and "internet personalities." But that's exactly why it works so well for small groups and close friends.
- wil421 9y ago
  Small groups and close friends was what Facebook was in the past. I remember joining when you had to have a .edu address.
- fullshark 9y ago
  The question remains, is there money in that?
- sincerely 9y ago
  It works well for medium-scale “personalities”. A lot of content creators (streamers / IG model / porn star / etc) offer snapchat access in exchange for a certain tier of patronage
adsfasdfsad111 9y ago
these are lagging metrics.

111_1_111 9y ago

$350 million net loss with $285 million in revenue. They could cut their entire sales, marketing, and R&D budgets and still be losing money.

mmanfrin 9y ago

The cynic in me feels this has more to do with the quarterly imperative to improve numbers showing that they've figured out how to start monetizing rather than an indication of the health of the company. The number of friends I see using Snapchat have dwindled mightily, although I admit I'm not quite the target audience (being a 29 year old male.

spuiszis 9y ago

Alternative headline: SNAP somehow surges 22% in after-hours trading despite reporting a $3.5BN loss and burning $819MM in cash. While revenue and user growth are both positive signs, there are still plenty of red flags. SNAP's hefty valuation is based on much higher growth rates and a faster route to profitability that still has yet to be seen. [1] https://investor.snap.com/~/media/Files/S/Snap-IR/reports-and-presentations/q4-17-earnings-slides.pdf https://investor.snap.com/~/media/Files/S/Snap-IR/reports-an... Edit: grammar

manderson2080 9y ago
$1.99BN was accrued over previous years from stock-based compensation. This is very standard for companies in the year they IPO.

pkamb 9y ago

The "Publisher" stories I see on Snapchat are invariably stories about various Kardashian/Jenner family members or generic buzzfeed-esque millennial-targeted clickbait. These seem very poorly targeted towards me. Does everyone see only this? Are there ways to get into different/better advertising buckets? Even something like "GQ" would be far better than the "People" content I'm currently seeing. On Instagram the ads are targeted at things I would actually click through and buy -- lots of ads for shoes, bags, clothing, kickstarter-like items, etc. I assume that's via the hashtags and people I follow on Instagram: cars, travel, architecture, etc. + perhaps via some creepy FaceBook magic. Without hashtags, how does Snapchat figure out what "Publishers" I'd want to see?

tedmiston 9y ago
That's mostly what I see in the publisher section too. I wasn't under the impression that it was curated per user but I could be wrong. I don't interact with the publisher stuff a ton.
zjaffee 9y ago
Yes (at least with the new version), you should be able to long click on the story and say show less of this. (Source, I've done this and it's worked pretty well).
bennesvig 9y ago
Snapchat has object recognition. With a ton of photos/videos stored in memories, they could get a decent idea of one's interests based on object recognition and text used in Snaps.
adjkant 9y ago
You can tell them to ignore some publishers and subscribe to others. My Snapchat subscriptions are NYT, Wired, WaPo, and a few others. I have blocked People and Daily Mail. Hold down on a publisher story to get options.
- pkamb 9y ago
  In the last 24 hours I've gotten the newly designed app, and it is much more prominent now on how to subscribe/block publishers. Did subscriptions even exist in the previous app?

traviswingo 9y ago

Whatever happened to businesses making money?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
toephu2 9y ago
That's so 1990s

KaoruAoiShiho 9y ago

Awww yeah, go snap. Right again. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15677666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15677666

restlessdesign 9y ago
It must feel pretty cool to be right.
bennesvig 9y ago
> The latest conference call was very enlightening in that it showed me how much snapchat was doing wrong and what they can do to fix it. Just curious, what did you think they were doing wrong and needed to fix?

jknoepfler 9y ago

why does every post about Snap seem to fill up with (what sounds like) astroturf? This comment section has at least five undisclosed Snap marketers posting and and voting in it or I'm a llama. Multiple comments in the top comment chain sound like a PM's cocktail party talking points.

nemothekid 9y ago
I’ll be honest - I’m rooting for SNAP and I want to see them succeed. Anything to challenge the Facebook social monopoly and at least pretends to put on a facade of privacy.
- angryasian 9y ago
  lol, i don't know why you think snap will be any better or any better currently. They are all just advertising companies. Lets not be naive and really pretend one is really better than the other.
  - nemothekid 9y ago
    There's a huge gap between a company like Turner Broadcasting and Facebook, despite the fact that on paper, they are both advertising companies. The one that isn't sucking in huge amounts of data is a clearly better to me.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > There's a huge gap between a company like Turner Broadcasting and Facebook, despite the fact that on paper, they are both advertising companies. On paper, neither Facebook nor TBS is an advertising company. Advertising companies create and manage advertising campaigns; TBS and Facebook are media companies in different segments of the media whose primary income stream is through selling advertising space.
      - angryasian 9y ago

verall 9y ago

As a member of 18~23yo age group ("young person"), I would say snaps the only social media I enjoy using besides HN/reddit. Most young people I know use Facebook for groups (local like a school or city), events , and chat. IMO Facebook is shooting all of these feet off with the algorithmic newsfeed and spinning off messenger. Snap however is used constantly to keep up with peers. Haven't met a single person that uses instagram's stories, even though its usage numbers tell another story. It really might just be my age/location/privlege bubble, but it consistently baffles me that Facebook keeps growing at such a faster speed than snap. I asked my younger siblings and none of them nor their friends have facebooks, besides the one in college. They all have snap and insta, and spend ~2X time on snap than insta. Most text communication is snap or SMS.

SubNoize 9y ago
How do they communicate when placed Infront of a computer? I see the appeal of snap with the younger crowd but the fact that it lives in a phone seems like a major con, sure it's easily fixed by allowing browser access. As someone who grew up on MSN & ICQ I couldn't imagine having to stop what I'm doing to pick up my phone every time I want to message someone.
- carlivar 9y ago
  Phone is a computer. Just not the interface or size we old fogeys prefer.
- stochastic_monk 9y ago
  I know a lot of kids in their 20s who like Discord. Slack is much better, but Discord sunk its teeth into the gaming community and it spread.
  - ubercow13 9y ago
    In what way is Slack better?
    - 9y ago

Ros2 9y ago

Snapchat is the only social media that actually celebrates the impermanence and general boringness of everyday life. Instagram and Facebook may have stories but the site is heavily predicated on pride/narcissism arms race with your "friends". Even your biggest narcissist can only "win" for 24 hours on Snapchat and from what I can see they'll generally tap out of keeping up any facades to try and make others jealous about how (seemingly) great their life is within 4-5 weeks of using it and then join others in appreciating the little things that make life worth living. Your own personal values and mileage may vary, but they've hit a niche with me.

adjkant 9y ago
I think that "niche" is what you share with most people under 19 or so as of today. People are quick to write off Snapchat's popularity with young users as it being the hot new toy they will tire with, but I think it's a lot deeper than that. They see the mistakes of millennials and older with social media and want nothing to do with it (and are thus nowhere to be found on Facebook, yet still on Instagram because it hasn't suffered the same problems yet). Snapchat avoids a lot of those pitfalls, though of course not without other problems. I think so long as that impermanence is the focus, and they allow for easy/simple communication between close friends (I'm worried about the non-chronological part for this exact reason), they will be a big part of the future of social media. Facebook and the apps it owns have all tried towards that, but if the core is permanence (the classic profile, posts, walls, likes, comments), they will always be fighting a rising tide. Adding stories on top of that doesn't change the core use of the app.
- ramzyo 9y ago
  >> They see the mistakes of millennials and older with social media and want nothing to do with it (and are thus nowhere to be found on Facebook, yet still on Instagram because it hasn't suffered the same problems yet) I’d be interested to see data to support this assertion.
  - adjkant 9y ago
    It's hard data to get because people still have Facebook accounts, they just don't post on them. In order to get that data, Facebook would have to release it by choice, and good luck with that one. Do an experiment though. Look at all your friends around 17-18 (hard if you're older to get a good sample size, but find someone who has friends that age if possible). Now scroll through their walls and see when you hit 2016. I bet it's pretty quick in 75%+ cases. I just did it on the few I have (siblings of college friends). One took 4 posts to get to 2015. Two of those were blocks of happy birthday posts grouped together. I know all of those people are very active on Instagram though. Now if you can, look at people ages 23-25 or so. See how much more they post. This is of course only data you can essentially get from being young and having access to friends in both ranges. But I see it time and time again.

andygarcia551 9y ago

Great to see the conversation going on here. I work at Snap on our revenue and product features and am hiring for my team. If you are passionate about being a part of building the future of Augmented Reality, Creative Tools or in general building systems at scale, drop me a message. I'm looking for engineers with strong backgrounds in building scalable distributed systems, our apis and services receive billions of requests per day. In addition, if you are an IOS or Android (especially) goes without saying, send me a message too! getsetgold@gmail.com

har564 9y ago
Can't believe that Snapchat didn't give you an email address.
acd10j 9y ago
if you are job posting it would instill greater trust if you use company email id rather than generic gmail.

samnwa 9y ago

Hello, just wanted to stop by and say that Snap sucks.

sctb 9y ago
Please stop.

inamberclad 9y ago

My two complaints with Snapchat are that the app itself is somewhat bloated. In addition, I've turned off personalized ads and as far as I can tell, they're respecting it since all the ads are just lowest-common-denominator drivel

iaml 9y ago

I wish any of my friends would use snapchat, I would be so happy! Instead they use instagram stories, but I can't open instagram without being bombarded by tons of spam and irrelevant ads anymore, I just can't use it.

megaman22 9y ago

Snapchat has advertising? I'll admit, I'm a neophyte and basically just use it for texting a handful of people that for whatever reason appear to be allergic to good old SMS, but I've never seen any of it. I'm not sure where I'd go in the app to see it. I suppose it's a good thing; they're not wasting any of those views on people like me...

chatmasta 9y ago

I called this when Snap introduced self serve ads. Since then I've been seeing a bunch of insurance/debt ads that are obviously affiliate campaigns. Like it or not, this is how FB bootstrapped their ads business (acai berry anyone?), and Snap is smart to capture the long tail of self-serve advertisers.

heedlessly2 9y ago

i think people who argue "Snapchat will never be as big as Facebook" are just wasting their time. Who cares? Social experience feels more engaging. FB is better for "acquaintanceships", but Snapchat is better for friendships.

whymsicalburito 9y ago

I've been trying to get into snapchat for the past 2 months and I still just don't see the appeal. Every interaction I've had with someone on the platform could have just as easily happened in any other messenger platform (pick one of the 1000s out there). I'm only 29, but I feel way too old to be using snapchat. Maybe I'm missing something, but I see myself deleting the app this year.