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Apps are easy to install... and easy to uninstall. Where's Snapchat these days? What about Vine? What about tumblr? These companies make apps to try to monetiz

by jbob2000 6y ago

Apps are easy to install... and easy to uninstall. Where's Snapchat these days? What about Vine? What about tumblr? These companies make apps to try to monetize a community, but communities are fickle and easy to scare off. If I were an investor, I'd value these apps for the computers in their offices and the code their developers write and that's it. Maybe $100mil if you get me on a good day. You can't value them for their reach, because it's not the company or the app that makes them valuable, it's the community.

josephpmay 6y ago
Snapchat is doing great and making money. They're still worth over 33 Billion.
- creaghpatr 6y ago
  Undervalued at $33B in my opinion.
  - guuguuguu 6y ago
    I have never seen a person using snapchat. Maybe I am too old
    - dmarlow 6y ago
      Let alone anyone talking about it anymore.
    - fragmede 6y ago
      anecdata isn't data
      - marapuru 6y ago
        Thanks for this great play on words :)
- jbob2000 6y ago
  They're making money until they aren't. OnlyFans is sweeping a large amount of adult models off of Snapchat. Everyone is doing disappearing content, stories, and photo filters. The only thing they have left are the contracts they signed with companies and creators when they were in their heyday.
  - coralreef 6y ago
    They make money from advertising to end users. They have consecutive quarterly growth and are at an all time high for DAU: https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-dau/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-dau/
- adventured 6y ago
  > Snapchat is doing great and making money. Snap is losing a lot of money. Their operating loss was an astounding $596 million for the first two quarters of 2020. Barely an improvement over last year's $620m operating loss for the same period. Somehow they managed to generate a $596m operating loss on $916m in sales. Truly remarkable performance. It's not easy to so poorly run a business that should be printing profits. Facebook generated nearly a billion dollars in operating profit at that sales scale. The least Snap could do is break even.
- devmunchies 6y ago
  I haven't seen or heard about anyone using snapchat in the last year. It used to be the location for all my family's chat. They definitely aren't experiencing explosive growth anymore.
  - askafriend 6y ago
    The growth is focused internationally now.
  - yroc92 6y ago
    It’s very popular amongst younger people.
    - samtheprogram 6y ago
      As someone in their mid-twenties, I can confirm. Since a lot of users don't have iPhone's/iMessage, and/or just don't use Facebook/Messenger that much, it's become a go-to messaging platform for those that don't seek out the more dedicated ones like Whatsapp, at least in my non-technical circles. I'm in several group chats that all organically cultivated on Snapchat in the past couple years. Besides that, they've built out their first-party content platform pretty well, which I assume is what's driving their advertising growth, and (anecdotally) is shared in-app relatively frequently, although I've recognized some reposting/reformatting of said video content from Youtube or other sources, e.g. WatchMojo.
nl 6y ago
Snapchat is growing revenue at over 30% a year. Vine was bought by Twitter and shut down. Tumblr was bought by Yahoo and suffered the same fate as everything Yahoo buys.
- virtue3 6y ago
  tumblr was doing fine till it banned adult content :(
alehul 6y ago
I definitely empathize with your position on this, and you're right that community is the valuable part, hence the focus around active users. What makes TikTok unique beyond growing like wildfire: their monetization strategy will be easier (the social aspect leads to relevant advertising), and their community is more stable! The stable community is driven in part by their algorithms, which replace Instagram and Facebook's idea of a feed of those you follow. It gives more power to TikTok, in that you won't notice if some members of the community leave, and they can continue showing you content you'll enjoy from millions of other users. To run through the list of companies you mentioned: (1) Snapchat has a solid userbase that's likely to stay with it, and they're worth over $30b. They aren't profitable, but they chose that path when they focused on Spectacles above monetization, and paid engineers more than Google. A $50b valuation wouldn't be unheard of if they had 2x time-on-app as TikTok does. (2) Vine had hundreds of millions of active users when it was shut down by Twitter. (3) Tumblr is unique; they cut their own head off when they started removing content. They were always a niche service, without the mainstream appeal and without the ability to target their users with relevant advertising.
- jbob2000 6y ago
  > What makes TikTok unique beyond growing like wildfire: their monetization strategy will be easier (the social aspect leads to relevant advertising), and their community is more stable! I think monetizing a community that did not start with the expectation of being monetized will be difficult. Reddit is dealing with this right now and it's degrading the site and the community and they still aren't profitable. Youtube has the same issue right now - many creators did not plan to have their channel monetized and are now being shutdown or delisted because their content is thought to be dangerous to the monetization efforts. This is what I mean when I say that TikTok is "easy to uninstall". As soon as a creator feels burned by the monetization efforts, they press and hold and click Delete App and they are gone. There's no contract in place that says "if you quit you must give us 60 days notice or pay a penalty", there's no stickiness but the validation from the community. Monetization puts the company in the middle of the validation the creator gets from the consumer. Creators detect this, feel like they are being cut off from their drug, and bail to find the next "dealer".
- 6y ago
kerng 6y ago
The provided examples don't compute well. Snapchat for instance is doing well, worth lots of billions. One doesnt have to be No 1 to be successful. And with TikTok it's not unlikely that they will actually overtake some of Facebook services in the next few years.

josephpmay 6y ago

Snapchat is doing great and making money. They're still worth over 33 Billion.

creaghpatr 6y ago
Undervalued at $33B in my opinion.
- guuguuguu 6y ago
  I have never seen a person using snapchat. Maybe I am too old
  - dmarlow 6y ago
    Let alone anyone talking about it anymore.
  - fragmede 6y ago
    anecdata isn't data
    - marapuru 6y ago
      Thanks for this great play on words :)
jbob2000 6y ago
They're making money until they aren't. OnlyFans is sweeping a large amount of adult models off of Snapchat. Everyone is doing disappearing content, stories, and photo filters. The only thing they have left are the contracts they signed with companies and creators when they were in their heyday.
- coralreef 6y ago
  They make money from advertising to end users. They have consecutive quarterly growth and are at an all time high for DAU: https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-dau/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-dau/
adventured 6y ago
> Snapchat is doing great and making money. Snap is losing a lot of money. Their operating loss was an astounding $596 million for the first two quarters of 2020. Barely an improvement over last year's $620m operating loss for the same period. Somehow they managed to generate a $596m operating loss on $916m in sales. Truly remarkable performance. It's not easy to so poorly run a business that should be printing profits. Facebook generated nearly a billion dollars in operating profit at that sales scale. The least Snap could do is break even.
devmunchies 6y ago
I haven't seen or heard about anyone using snapchat in the last year. It used to be the location for all my family's chat. They definitely aren't experiencing explosive growth anymore.
- askafriend 6y ago
  The growth is focused internationally now.
- yroc92 6y ago
  It’s very popular amongst younger people.
  - samtheprogram 6y ago
    As someone in their mid-twenties, I can confirm. Since a lot of users don't have iPhone's/iMessage, and/or just don't use Facebook/Messenger that much, it's become a go-to messaging platform for those that don't seek out the more dedicated ones like Whatsapp, at least in my non-technical circles. I'm in several group chats that all organically cultivated on Snapchat in the past couple years. Besides that, they've built out their first-party content platform pretty well, which I assume is what's driving their advertising growth, and (anecdotally) is shared in-app relatively frequently, although I've recognized some reposting/reformatting of said video content from Youtube or other sources, e.g. WatchMojo.

nl 6y ago

Snapchat is growing revenue at over 30% a year. Vine was bought by Twitter and shut down. Tumblr was bought by Yahoo and suffered the same fate as everything Yahoo buys.

virtue3 6y ago
tumblr was doing fine till it banned adult content :(

alehul 6y ago

I definitely empathize with your position on this, and you're right that community is the valuable part, hence the focus around active users. What makes TikTok unique beyond growing like wildfire: their monetization strategy will be easier (the social aspect leads to relevant advertising), and their community is more stable! The stable community is driven in part by their algorithms, which replace Instagram and Facebook's idea of a feed of those you follow. It gives more power to TikTok, in that you won't notice if some members of the community leave, and they can continue showing you content you'll enjoy from millions of other users. To run through the list of companies you mentioned: (1) Snapchat has a solid userbase that's likely to stay with it, and they're worth over $30b. They aren't profitable, but they chose that path when they focused on Spectacles above monetization, and paid engineers more than Google. A $50b valuation wouldn't be unheard of if they had 2x time-on-app as TikTok does. (2) Vine had hundreds of millions of active users when it was shut down by Twitter. (3) Tumblr is unique; they cut their own head off when they started removing content. They were always a niche service, without the mainstream appeal and without the ability to target their users with relevant advertising.

jbob2000 6y ago
> What makes TikTok unique beyond growing like wildfire: their monetization strategy will be easier (the social aspect leads to relevant advertising), and their community is more stable! I think monetizing a community that did not start with the expectation of being monetized will be difficult. Reddit is dealing with this right now and it's degrading the site and the community and they still aren't profitable. Youtube has the same issue right now - many creators did not plan to have their channel monetized and are now being shutdown or delisted because their content is thought to be dangerous to the monetization efforts. This is what I mean when I say that TikTok is "easy to uninstall". As soon as a creator feels burned by the monetization efforts, they press and hold and click Delete App and they are gone. There's no contract in place that says "if you quit you must give us 60 days notice or pay a penalty", there's no stickiness but the validation from the community. Monetization puts the company in the middle of the validation the creator gets from the consumer. Creators detect this, feel like they are being cut off from their drug, and bail to find the next "dealer".
6y ago

kerng 6y ago

The provided examples don't compute well. Snapchat for instance is doing well, worth lots of billions. One doesnt have to be No 1 to be successful. And with TikTok it's not unlikely that they will actually overtake some of Facebook services in the next few years.