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I will never understand the desire to radically change an interface on any product <10 years old. Especially Snap's, as I don't remember anyone complaining abou

I will never understand the desire to radically change an interface on any product <10 years old. Especially Snap's, as I don't remember anyone complaining about the interface. Instead, why not make your app use less battery power and improve the camera's functionality? Those types of improvement are universally appreciated, yet the least likely to be implemented.

toasterlovin 8y ago
> Especially Snap's, as I don't remember anyone complaining about the interface. Surely you’re joking? I make software for a living and I was utterly and completely lost in Snapchat. Easily the most confusing software I’ve used in a long time.
- troquerre 8y ago
  You were not snaps target user
  - Klover 8y ago
    Indeed. Similar to how young people will read books while their parents barely finish the sensational short articles in a newspaper. They seem to be more willing to figure things out, especially combined with their tribal actions like going to great lengths to make sure that everything they wear is black, or has a certain logo on it, or that they only listen to particular music. If a particular social app has a gate, then it can be all the better for them. [1] Not to say that making your app unnecessarily annoying is grounds for success! There were probably 500 apps on the very same day as Snapchat launched that you never heard about. [1] No peer reviewed study or anything. Just, you know, kids.
    - 1337biz 8y ago
      Very good points. That idea of creating something for kids that others are not/not willing to figure out, is really fascinating. Probably happens most of the time unintentionally.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    I am both aware of that and completely unbothered by it. I was responding to a specific claim about how easy the app was to use.
- Rjevski 8y ago
  I think he’s referring to Snapchat’s initial UI around 2013. This was the best UI - one single list of all your sent & received snaps and that’s it. No stories, no “discover”, no bullshit. Just double tap on any contact you want to send a snap to and you’re good to go. There was also this lovely feature where you could see anyone’s “best friends” (aka who’s banging who). As someone who’s Snapchat’s target market I greatly miss all of that. After they ruined the app I deleted my account and never looked back.
twblalock 8y ago
Snap, and also Twitter, are in a bit of a bind. They can't change anything without alienating some of their most passionate users, but if they change nothing they will stagnate and cede all of the possible benefits of innovation to their competitors. A company that lets its competitors come up with all the new ideas is probably not going to survive very long. It's understandable that Snap wanted to improve its design. On principle there is nothing wrong with that, but that's not what they actually did because the CEO ignored a lot of warnings that the changes were not improvements.
- manigandham 8y ago
  > A company that lets its competitors come up with all the new ideas is probably not going to survive very long. They can just acquire those companies, which is the strategy used by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other giants that are moving faster than startups now by deploying capital faster and better than ever before.
  - adventured 8y ago
    They can't easily afford to splurge on the best acquisitions at this point. Instagram cost $1 billion. YouTube cost $1.65 billion. Snapchat is heading toward bankruptcy or a forced sale if they don't dramatically cut costs. They're down to $1.4b in cash (from $2b three quarters prior). They can't safely buy an Instagram at this point. Pretty soon they're going to be the $1-$2 billion acquisition. Twitter is in much better financial condition of course, although a $1-$2 billion acquisition is still a huge chunk of change for their business ($6b in cash, ~$300m-$400m per year in profit). Twitter's problem is that their cash is precious, because their business doesn't generate a ton of it (they've been persistently hauling billions of cash around from their past funding days). That cash is a big safety buffer that they can't easily replace if they burn it. They can use their market cap of course, and shareholders will only tolerate so much of that at their size and given their non-growth context. Twitter needs to figure out what it wants to do before the market 'realizes' what they're actually worth (zero growth gets you an optimistic ~20 PE * $350m profit = $7 billion; a further 2/3 drop from here); it's similar to the old Yahoo scenario pre Alibaba (no growth, the market temporarily giving you an abnormally high valuation, a trapped product). The giants are seemingly moving fast because they have comically obscene amounts of cash pouring in and can't figure out what to do with it (other than share buybacks ala Facebook, or other capital return programs; in Google's case, they're just piling it up or buying real estate). So they spray it all around. A billion dollar acquisition mistake is meaningless if you're Microsoft and generating ~$40b in operating income (next four quarters). For Snapchat, it'd be fatal. Google's net tangible assets are up to $149 billion now. They're starting to look more like a financial company than a tech company. Like a private equity company that happens to own a lucrative search engine monopoly and a media company (YouTube). JP Morgan's net tangible assets by contrast are $182b and Bank of America is $170b.
otabdeveloper1 8y ago
> Instead, why not make your app use less battery power and improve the camera's functionality? Those types of improvement are universally appreciated, yet the least likely to be implemented. That requires hiring one or two really good developers and product managers and letting them polish the product. You can get a great product that way, but not a billion-plus valuation. If you want your valuation to grow, you need to hire thousands of really bad programmers and hundreds of very bad managers, endlessly churning out "updates" and "redesigns" and "refactorings". Nobody ever got to be a billion-plus company by keeping headcount and expenses low.

toasterlovin 8y ago

> Especially Snap's, as I don't remember anyone complaining about the interface. Surely you’re joking? I make software for a living and I was utterly and completely lost in Snapchat. Easily the most confusing software I’ve used in a long time.

troquerre 8y ago
You were not snaps target user
- Klover 8y ago
  Indeed. Similar to how young people will read books while their parents barely finish the sensational short articles in a newspaper. They seem to be more willing to figure things out, especially combined with their tribal actions like going to great lengths to make sure that everything they wear is black, or has a certain logo on it, or that they only listen to particular music. If a particular social app has a gate, then it can be all the better for them. [1] Not to say that making your app unnecessarily annoying is grounds for success! There were probably 500 apps on the very same day as Snapchat launched that you never heard about. [1] No peer reviewed study or anything. Just, you know, kids.
  - 1337biz 8y ago
    Very good points. That idea of creating something for kids that others are not/not willing to figure out, is really fascinating. Probably happens most of the time unintentionally.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  I am both aware of that and completely unbothered by it. I was responding to a specific claim about how easy the app was to use.
Rjevski 8y ago
I think he’s referring to Snapchat’s initial UI around 2013. This was the best UI - one single list of all your sent & received snaps and that’s it. No stories, no “discover”, no bullshit. Just double tap on any contact you want to send a snap to and you’re good to go. There was also this lovely feature where you could see anyone’s “best friends” (aka who’s banging who). As someone who’s Snapchat’s target market I greatly miss all of that. After they ruined the app I deleted my account and never looked back.

twblalock 8y ago

Snap, and also Twitter, are in a bit of a bind. They can't change anything without alienating some of their most passionate users, but if they change nothing they will stagnate and cede all of the possible benefits of innovation to their competitors. A company that lets its competitors come up with all the new ideas is probably not going to survive very long. It's understandable that Snap wanted to improve its design. On principle there is nothing wrong with that, but that's not what they actually did because the CEO ignored a lot of warnings that the changes were not improvements.

manigandham 8y ago
> A company that lets its competitors come up with all the new ideas is probably not going to survive very long. They can just acquire those companies, which is the strategy used by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other giants that are moving faster than startups now by deploying capital faster and better than ever before.
- adventured 8y ago
  They can't easily afford to splurge on the best acquisitions at this point. Instagram cost $1 billion. YouTube cost $1.65 billion. Snapchat is heading toward bankruptcy or a forced sale if they don't dramatically cut costs. They're down to $1.4b in cash (from $2b three quarters prior). They can't safely buy an Instagram at this point. Pretty soon they're going to be the $1-$2 billion acquisition. Twitter is in much better financial condition of course, although a $1-$2 billion acquisition is still a huge chunk of change for their business ($6b in cash, ~$300m-$400m per year in profit). Twitter's problem is that their cash is precious, because their business doesn't generate a ton of it (they've been persistently hauling billions of cash around from their past funding days). That cash is a big safety buffer that they can't easily replace if they burn it. They can use their market cap of course, and shareholders will only tolerate so much of that at their size and given their non-growth context. Twitter needs to figure out what it wants to do before the market 'realizes' what they're actually worth (zero growth gets you an optimistic ~20 PE * $350m profit = $7 billion; a further 2/3 drop from here); it's similar to the old Yahoo scenario pre Alibaba (no growth, the market temporarily giving you an abnormally high valuation, a trapped product). The giants are seemingly moving fast because they have comically obscene amounts of cash pouring in and can't figure out what to do with it (other than share buybacks ala Facebook, or other capital return programs; in Google's case, they're just piling it up or buying real estate). So they spray it all around. A billion dollar acquisition mistake is meaningless if you're Microsoft and generating ~$40b in operating income (next four quarters). For Snapchat, it'd be fatal. Google's net tangible assets are up to $149 billion now. They're starting to look more like a financial company than a tech company. Like a private equity company that happens to own a lucrative search engine monopoly and a media company (YouTube). JP Morgan's net tangible assets by contrast are $182b and Bank of America is $170b.

otabdeveloper1 8y ago

> Instead, why not make your app use less battery power and improve the camera's functionality? Those types of improvement are universally appreciated, yet the least likely to be implemented. That requires hiring one or two really good developers and product managers and letting them polish the product. You can get a great product that way, but not a billion-plus valuation. If you want your valuation to grow, you need to hire thousands of really bad programmers and hundreds of very bad managers, endlessly churning out "updates" and "redesigns" and "refactorings". Nobody ever got to be a billion-plus company by keeping headcount and expenses low.