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Nobody Trusts Facebook, Twitter Is a Hot Mess, What Is Snapchat Doing?
- lingzb 8y agoSounds like Evan is copying Mark this time :p https://www.fastcompany.com/3052887/mark-zuckerbergs-growth-chart https://www.fastcompany.com/3052887/mark-zuckerbergs-growth-...
- newswriter99 8y agoTakes three paragraphs to get to the answer: Instagram stories. Snapschat is busy trying to remain relevant as Instagram one-ups it again and again. Other than teenagers using it to sext, Snapchat is largely useless compared to Insta.
- jandrese 8y agoCertainly their core business model of teens sexting is still strong?
- partiallypro 8y agoHard to monetize that without going against the grain of also being a family platform.
- Rjevski 8y agoDoes everything need to be a family platform? A bit of an extreme example, but the adult entertainment industry seems to do fine without catering to families - I don't see why Snapchat couldn't do the same?
- toomuchtodo 8y agoIt's about the audience. Snapchat advertisers don't want to be associated with adult content. Adult entertainers are catering to their paying audience.
- Rjevski 8y agoMy point wasn’t to turn Snapchat into an adult entertainment site. It was simply to accept and embrace its fate as a sexting tool. Dating apps are also used for this purpose (frankly their whole purpose is to find people you’d eventually fuck with) and yet they are a socially acceptable thing to use and advertisers don’t have any problems with them, so I don’t see why it would be any different for Snapchat.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoI agree it would work if Snap has a sub brand tailored towards sexting, where ad buyers could segment between Snap and a more avant-garde experience.
- sevensor 8y agoSeems like the bigger theme in the article is that the company is being run by a child. Edit: I should perhaps expand on this. TFA repeatedly mentions Spiegel's tender age and his inexperience, and it points out that one of his core management techniques is a thing he picked up in prep school.
- brootstrap 8y agoYeah those meetings they mentioned (council meetings), sounds like the worst meeting i've ever had at my company, but 10 times as cheesey and 'make me want to kill myself'y.
- newswriter99 8y agoNot that it matters but I just burned through a couple of bios about him and wow, for a 28-year-old he looks 40. The stress of executive leadership I suppose . . .
- bduerst 8y agoGoogle+ tried to copy facebook functionality too, right? While instagram already has the users, I think the point is that you can build it, but you can't make people use it. Instagram can prevent existing users from leaving snapchat for 'stories', but will it really entice snapchat users to come over to instagram, given that social networks are a function of people who use it?
- josephjrobison 8y agoInstagram Stories daily active users is 400 million. [1] Snapchat dau is 188 million. Given that this declined from 191 million from Q1 2018, seems Instagram is crushing them. Anecdotally I’m surprised Snapchat is even doing this well. Before Instagram Stories I had probably 50 people a day posting new Snapchat stories. Now it’s a handful a week. They’re all on Instagram. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/730315/instagram-stories-dau/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/730315/instagram-stories... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-dau/#0 https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-dau/...
- bduerst 8y ago1.5% QoQ decrease in DAUs is hardly being crushed, especially when they have a 45% YoY increase in revenue [1]. See? I can google and cherry pick stats from statista too. My point point about social being a two-sided market still stands regardless of your personal experience. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/552694/snapchat-quarterly-revenue/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/552694/snapchat-quarterl...
- hart_russell 8y agoThat's quite a statement. I'm an active snapchat user, because the user interface is very streamlined. There's no cruft from over 24 hours ago on the platform.
- dorkwood 8y agoTo me they’re entirely different products. I use Snapchat to send funny things I see to specific friends who will find them funny. I can’t do that on Instagram without broadcasting that same message to over 100 people.
- kevinschumacher 8y agoInstagram actually cloned snapchat in its app. You can send direct messages now. Photos, videos, filters, drawing, text, emoji, everything. Photo and videos can be sent to be viewed once/replayed (like snapchat), or persisted in the chat log.
- joshvm 8y agoDisagree. Currently helping run a summer camp with lots of < 18 year olds where we try to limit phone usage in group sessions. Snapchat is used for everything, probably sexting too, but as far as I can tell it's the goto instant messaging. When they're on their phones during sessions, they're all snapping each other. Insta is also ubiquitous - aside from following people, lots of them use it to discover smaller/niche bands (eg grime), for example. Facebook? Really uncool. Their parents are on Facebook. Big component of these apps is the group dynamic. Plays well with the current culture of social capital, messages can be easily broadcast, rated, commented on, shared around. But you also have the option of things being semi-ephemeral.
- lazzlazzlazz 8y agoI used to see that among the <18 crowd, but Snapchat has evaporated weirdly quickly. I'm only hearing about Insta and a long tail of other apps. Lots and lots of conventional texting/iMessage.
- grillvogel 8y agoI'm in my 30s and most of my friends use snapchat for instant messaging, that is the primary purpose of snapchat.
- at-fates-hands 8y agoSpiegel miscalculated and its cost him billions. He had multiple opportunities to sell Snapchat to the competitors who are now still growing and copying his features while his own platform has essentially stalled out. A verge article detailed its decline a few months ago: https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/18/17366528/snapchat-decline-internet-ghost-towns https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/18/17366528/snapchat-decline... And the previous HN discussion on said article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17431663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17431663
- sp332 8y agoFacebook went up against Snapchat directly, pushing Stories as hard as possible in all their apps. There's nothing inherently wrong with the product, it just got out-competed by a bigger player.
- jandrese 8y agoI have to admit I heard about Snapchat for the first time when they turned down IIRC a billion dollars from Facebook. Then I looked into it and realized that the CEO must be crazy because his audience was almost entirely composed of fickle teenagers.
- misiti3780 8y agoi agree with everything you said except he is a currently supposedly worth 3B which is more than he would have gotten if he sold to facebook -- no?
- late2part 8y agoI don't know anyone over 18 who uses Snapchat besides celebrities.
- gumby 8y agoa lot of college students.
- pgm8705 8y agoOpposite for me. I don't know many people over 18 who don't use Snapchat. Even parents of most my peers(late 20s - mid 30s) use it. It has largely replaced iMessage or SMS for exchanging dumb pictures of day-to-day things (e.g. Your dog doing something silly/cute)
- YourMatt 8y agoI'm pushing 40. It's split in my circle. Less than half use it. Of the other half, it's mostly women. I personally tried it and rejected it after getting a feel for how it works.
- pmulv 8y agoAs some anecdata, my mid-twenties group of friends and I use snapchat frequently. My brother is a freshman in college and he uses it with his friends as well. For whatever reason, starting "streaks" has become popular with my friends, where the same friends will snap me everyday and expect a snap in reply so that our counter of consecutive days increases over time. I hate to admit it, but I enjoy this gamification of the service, and it has resulted in me checking snapchat everyday for more than 650 consecutive days. I know it's been that long because that is my longest snap streak, but the truth is that I am rarely the one that breaks the streak so it has probably been much longer than that. There is also definitely a feeling of disappointment and relief when a large streak is broken.
- sutterbomb 8y ago650 consecutive days?! Lock your phone in a safe for a weekend and take a walk in the woods, I beg you.
- creaghpatr 8y agoI checked the sponsored stories section recently and the first one was called "WHY MY FRIENDS ATE MY SEVERED FOOT" by Vice Media. I did not inquire further. Stopped checking Stories after that.
- decisionfiction 8y agoI feel old to use Snapchat but what I care about : word on the street - possible crypto integration shhh...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- umvi 8y agoMaybe it's just that my phone (Nexus 5X) is getting old, but Snapchat is probably the worst Android app I've ever used. Not sure how the iOS experience is. Let's go down the list: - HUGE (>300 MB) - Extremely Slow/Laggy UI - Battery Suck (mainly because it auto turns on location services, etc.) - Sometimes soft bricks my camera (need to restart in order to use my normal camera app) I only use it to stay in the loop of my family members, maybe I should start campaigning everyone to switch to Instagram.
- ekianjo 8y ago> - Sometimes soft bricks my camera (need to restart in order to use my normal camera app) Skype manages to do that on Android as well recently (while it used to work fine before).
- GuiA 8y agoIf userland software can soft brick the camera, the problem is not the userland software.
- jakear 8y agoThis is what happens when you choose “freedom” over stability. (iOS is not necessarily what I mean by “stability”. Not anymore at least.)
- _emacsomancer_ 8y agoI'm not sure Android is a shining example of freedom.
- ariwilson 8y agoCompared to iOS? Yes it is.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
- blauditore 8y ago> Snap employees complain about his dictatorial management style and penchant for secrecy. This is not too surprising to me. I remember how he actively worked towards preventing Snapchat from existing on the windows (phone/mobile) platform, purely due to Microsoft hate. This went as them going out of their way to targetedly fight third party windows phone apps until that indie dev gave up disappointed. That was pretty pathetic.
- Analemma_ 8y agoEverything I've read about Evan Spiegel indicates that he's really cargo-culting trying to be Steve Jobs, with no real understanding of why Jobs was successful.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Benjammer 8y ago>“Why would I go around the company and just chat with people? Like that would be so awkward” He sounds like a 17 year old, not necessarily that he has no idea what he's doing, imo. Just seems super immature a lot of the time.
- pcpcpc 8y agofull quote: "I had a pretty serious Christian upbringing. I remember growing up I was taught to be small, be a turtle,” he says. “I remember thinking, Why would I go around the company and just chat with people? Like that would be so awkward. Now I go walk around the office and get a ton of emails like, ‘Oh, my God, that was awesome you came by.’ ” but bloomberg did only highlight the bit you quoted and put it several paragraphs above the full quote...
- analyst74 8y agoThat's one of the many techniques journalists use to create false perspective without out right lying.
- urtrs 8y ago> The meeting I attended started with an employee lighting a candle in the center of the circle to dedicate the session to a cause, and then proceeded with a series of free-association prompts. A moderator asked us to tell a story about our names or a memory related to summer. This seems to me more like a cult than a company but maybe it works.
- dvtrn 8y agoI'd be inordinately curious to hear from anyone as to how it works though.
- Filligree 8y agoThere was an article very recently about how rituals help. Let's see... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17817912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17817912 Cults do the same thing, but doesn't mean it's inherently culty. It just easily lends itself to that.
- dvtrn 8y agoWell yes, I can certainly understand the impact of rituals, I'm curious to know more about this specific one. Sorry but in a workplace context, lighting a candle and commemorating the moment like this just feels...kitschy to me
- lanevorockz 8y agoNobody that is smart trusts a company that provides services for free. If you are not paying you are the product and not the client.
- AJRF 8y agoUnrelated: Chrome extension that changes the sentence "If you are not paying you are the product and not the client" to white space.
- gmueckl 8y agoThis comes to my mind: https://xkcd.com/2015/ https://xkcd.com/2015/
- ravenstine 8y agoTrusting people you don't know personally is just bad practice in general. And never trust anything that comes from the mouth of PR. Facebook was smart by having Zuckerberg act as public relations because he could act like he's one of us(not so much anymore), and people trusted him when he said things like "I just want to make the world more connected."(paraphrasing) Bad move, folks.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- xeromal 8y agoI trust duck duck go.
- captainbland 8y agoMastodon is growing on me. These big ol' VC driven social media giants are all overgrown and the cracks are showing. With mastodon, if one instance screws up, just go to another and still contact friends. I can even choose an instance with the economic and decision making model of my choosing, or run one myself and just engage with the federation on my own terms.
- TremendousJudge 8y ago>just go to another and still contact friends the only problem is that you can only have friends of the type of people that use Mastodon
- egypturnash 8y agoare you sure this is not actually an advantage
- notheguyouthink 8y agoIt is and it isn't. I imagine your humor implies that technical people are using Mastadon, ie the same type that would be using HN, but the reality is that while that is true, Twitter "rejects" are also using Mastadon. Sometimes this means communities filled with very.. controversial people.
- captainbland 8y agoYeah again I guess this is the choice isn't it? Those communities spring up everywhere, but instances can still block one-another. I'd say it's better to have a choice of moderation style than one grand overseer.
- naravara 8y ago>It is and it isn't. I imagine your humor implies that technical people are using Mastadon, ie the same type that would be using HN, but the reality is that while that is true, Twitter "rejects" are also using Mastadon. Sometimes this means communities filled with very.. controversial people. Mastodon being federated, though, means that while the controversial people may be using it, the rest of the Mastodon-Verse doesn't need to interact with them. The big trouble with Twitter is that if those people want to harass you, you as a user have very little choice but to sit there and take it.
- phobosdeimos 8y agoNobody trusts this sector. Was the same for doctors a hundred years ago. Now doctors take an oath and lose their license if they are caught doing something unethical. Maybe the tech sector will get there one day too. Until then assume hostility.
- FLUX-YOU 8y agoWill probably need a high profile case before anything gets moving (since there's a LOT of money to fight back against ethical laws). We need a governing ethics body to determine ethical guidelines, otherwise people are just going to invent their own ethics hosted on Github and that's bad if you follow it and have to go to court.
- shredprez 8y agoOath and licensing aside, public trust in doctors isn't great. Still, some code of ethics and associated incentive structure for tech would be great. But as long as the industry can stay just ahead of legal ramifications and stay solvent... The hostility is an easy hoop to jump through.
- buboard 8y ago> Was the same for doctors a hundred years ago. Now doctors take an oath and lose their license The Hippocratic oath is 2200 years old.
- scrumbledober 8y agoI don't really care what oath the doctor took (especially considering the actual wording of the hippocratic oath) but I definitely take comfort in the medical board's ability to revoke their license.
- buboard 8y agoThe point is that the comparison with doctors doesn't make much sense (and neither is medical ethics a recent thing). Doctors are judged by their continuous practice, but developers/entrepreneurs would not be ethically "judged" because of their programming style, but because of the things they create, which transcend them and remain in their absence, much like anything in engineering. (let alone that revokign a license does nothing to stop them from building it anyway)
- AndrewKemendo 8y agoThis is a great example of how personnel leadership doesn't matter for success, so long as your product leadership is successful. The product success subsidizes everything else, including absent or toxic leadership. And yes, Snapchat is clearly successful. They might be taking hits from the majors and close down in the long run, but Snap did create a new product category and redefined how video is consumed. They were the clear leaders in mobile AR also, which people don't seem to appreciate. It's been really hard for me to come to this conclusion about leadership, because I grew up in a culture where personnel leadership is paramount - if you're a bad leader you can get those under you killed, or they'll kill you. The fact that this just doesn't translate to business, especially where businesses are so focused on consumer products, is a challenge.
- ryandrake 8y agoI think as with everything in business, people vastly underestimate the role luck plays. There are companies with good leadership and good products that fail. There are companies with poor leadership and poor products that succeed. There are companies with poor leadership but good product that succeed, and some that fail... and all combinations of these attributes and outcomes. There is little causality and everyone is basically just rolling dice.
- sergiotapia 8y ago>Employees show up in groups of about a dozen, sit cross-legged on black cushions, and take turns with the “talking piece,” a heart-shaped purple geode that gives the bearer the right to confidentially share deep thoughts. Is this SOP in sillicon valley?
- JBReefer 8y agoAt this point I just take everything I hear about the valley as gospel - but always assume there's a healthy dose of harassment. So, so happy there's other options for tech.
- deadmetheny 8y agoI HAVE THE CONCH
- swasheck 8y agoCould it be a combination of saturation and fatigue? Sure, each of these platforms delivers a different experience, but there's really only so much you can "share" and, moreso, there's only so much that you can ingest. At some point in time I'm sure it gets exhausting updating all the things and keeping up with all the things.
- kaycebasques 8y agoDidn’t read the article, but just noting my impression based on the title (which is currently “Nobody Trusts Facebook, Twitter is a Hot Mess, What is Snapchat Doing?”)... maybe social media is in a “trough of disillusionment” akin to Gartner’s Hype Cycle? I’m suggesting this based on my interpretation that there seems to be a pervasive dissatisfaction and mistrust of social media in general.
- lolive 8y agoApart from the title, I do not see any argument why Twitter is a to-be-replaced social network. Personnaly, I see it as a wonderful way to keep track of the topics of interest of people I do not know personnally. Plus I can comment, and these people can comment back. Sounds good to me.
- jonshariat 8y agoIf you haven't been following it, the issue is not dealing with racists, calls for violence, hate speech, bullying, etc. There have been major clear cases and they refuse to act.
- minieggs 8y agoThey've chosen to act w/ private accounts, muted accounts, muted words, and blocked accounts. Personally, I find muted words a powerful feature but perhaps my story is a bit different as I don't find myself targeted by hate too often (ever). I'm hesitant to believe kicking accounts off the platform is a great solve. Does any social media platform take part in shadow banning? How has that worked out?
- sli 8y ago> Does any social media platform take part in shadow banning? How has that worked out? Reddit does, but I don't know how well it actually works since everyone is aware of it and can easily detect when they've been shadowbanned by simply using a second account.
- Mindwipe 8y agoEven Reddit's CEO has said that their shadowbanning approach is terrible and he wants rid of it but they haven't had time to build anything better yet.
- partiallypro 8y agoTwitter isn't going anywhere, it is far and above the most powerful social network. Because it's a raw data stream. As long as Jack doesn't kill it, it will live and be relevant for ages. There is no social media platform that is better for news and interacting with news makers...staying relevant to internet trends, etc. None are even close.
- gaius 8y agolavish parties for Halloween and New Year’s Eve, which came with their own code of secrecy: no photos. That speaks volumes in and of itself about the company culture. When a company bans its staff from using their own product what does that tell you?
- nradov 8y agoIt tells you they didn't want any evidence for potential sexual harassment lawsuits resulting from drunken antics at company parties.
- Maro 8y agoBased on my brief time at FB (in 2016-2017), FB is not evil. MZ is trying to do the right thing, overall. Using this as a major piece of positioning/propaganda is not going to work for Spiegel. Also, if they ever want to make money, they'll be playing the exact same game as FB. That's going to be tough, as by now Snapchat is just a feature (of FB). Also, I can tell you, FB employees are laser focused on executing and making a measurable impact (and getting a big bonus), there's no group therapy bitching. I don't have any love/hate for Snapchat, but it is going to be very tough for them. (I don't own either stock.)
- venantius 8y agoI think you're missing the point. It's not about MZ's motivations or even how FB thinks about things internally. It's about the perception by significant numbers of people - and, critically, their elected representatives - that FB is fundamentally shady. There is a very good chance the path we're on ends with FB and potentially all of the social networks being considerably more regulated than they are currently, and I'd argue GDPR shows that we're already well on our way down that path.
- Maro 8y agoRe regulation: I think regulation wouldn't help Snapchat, as any regulation would also apply to them. Actually, you could even argue that it's harder for a small(er) company to comply to regulation. (And btw. regulation is good, at this point MZ also thinks it's good and wants it.) Re people think FB is shady: that seems to be true, but FB's MAU and DAU keeps going up, whereas Snapchat's has stalled. Actions speak louder than words, literally. I'm not saying "Snapchat is f-cked", I'm just saying it will be very tough for them.
- clay_the_ripper 8y agoAlthough this seems like a popular opinion here, the only thing that concerns me about Facebook is the potential for the govt to get access to the data fb has on me. I actually trust fb with my data because I know that they don’t care what I do online and no one will ever look at it individually. They are just going to Hoover up as much data as possible to target me with better ads, but it’s not like a human being is looking at my data, it’s just a bunch of ML code. However if the govt can subpoena them and I’m on trial, the prosecution could probably make anyone look like a phsychopath and twist the data to look however they want.
- Rjevski 8y ago> What is Snapchat doing? Going bankrupt?
- kin 8y agoIMO there's still a lot of room for Snap to do something. They still have an opportunity to seize, same for Twitter. For example, there's a subset of content creators on Snap that charges for premium content (a separate private account w/ more content). Subscription and payment is done outside of the Snap app. Cancellations and payment confirmations are all done manually. I'm not even sure if Snap realizes this but they can totally make money off of it. Now that Evan is being more open and less dictatorial, someone will notice and bring opportunities like these to his attention.
- qubax 8y agoNobody trusts facebook? Is that why half the world is on facebook readily giving them their private info? Twitter is a hot mess? Is that why the president and most of the journalists are on twitter? Who cares what snapchat is doing? I don't get articles like this. What's the point?
- sandworm101 8y ago"Inside it, employees were connecting with each other, at times emotionally, about their childhoods, hopes, and fears. Council etiquette prohibits me from telling you what others shared, but during one of my turns with the geode, I told the group an embarrassing childhood story about getting sick during a family beach vacation. " Scientology much? Really. This is exactly the technique used to indoctrinate people into a cult. It is all about getting emotional hooks into the new member of the group. Secrecy, and the corresponding threat it implies, that creates loyalty. Knowing the secrets of others fosters group identity. Snap probably doesn't realize it, but this will not end well. It does not scale. Eventually "counsel" will become a secret room for the "in" people of the leadership team. Knowledge of secrets will divide groups. Eventually something will happen and things will implode.
- 40acres 8y agoSnap's recent performance and articles like this just solidify my view that Spigel is a bad CEO and that the Snap board has very little they can do to turn the company around. Evan seems like a great product guy but when it comes to executing as CEO he needs a lot of help. The fact that the board has not gotten a COO on board to help guide him is an indictment on them. Corporate governance in the valley continues to fall short.
- partiallypro 8y agoI'm not sure he's a great product guy...what product do they have? Filters? Auto-deleting messages? Spectacles? What a boondoggle that has been. The mere fact that he says the company is a photography company should be enough to make any investor flee.
- madrox 8y agoI once had a discussion with someone who does brand auditing for a living, and they said the brand perception of social media in general (and FB specifically) is very similar to the IRS. Whether FB is evil or not (it's a very rare person who tries to be evil), no one loves them. People only love communities they can wrap their arms around, and past a certain size that isn't possible. If Snapchat is lucky that'll happen to them one day, too.
- chatnati 8y agoSnapchat's security is so lax, everyone has a copy of their software now.
- Hysterisis 8y agoEven as someone who hates typical definitions of professionalism, sitting in a kindergarten like room and having DNMs with my colleagues sounds like one of the least professional things I can think of.
- bogomipz 8y ago>"The meeting I attended started with an employee lighting a candle in the center of the circle to dedicate the session to a cause, and then proceeded with a series of free-association prompts. A moderator asked us to tell a story about our names or a memory related to summer. Outside the round room, morale at Snap has been low recently. Inside it, employees were connecting with each other, at times emotionally, about their childhoods, hopes, and fears." This could be scene from an episode of HBO's Silicon Valley. This seems more like an exercise in humiliation than morale boosting. What's next Ayahuasca ceremonies, shaman, drum circles, primal scream therapy? I would quit before I participated in any of this nonsense. This CEO sounds like a real piece of work. This is why you shouldn't buy stock that withholds all voting rights from public shareholders.
- saurik 8y agoNever mind Snapchat, we all know this is Venmo's moment (if only users hadn't been so foolish as to reject the fun social media experience Venmo offers :/). https://youtu.be/BWFLztKBrLY https://youtu.be/BWFLztKBrLY