19 ms·

Snapchat’s product is booming

176 points by kantrowitz 4y ago

TremendousJudge 4y ago
Serious question, who actually uses Snapchat? I haven't heard it mentioned anywhere in at least six months.
- searchableguy 4y ago
  13-24 year olds. Majority of HN users aren't Snapchat users based on polls I've conducted on the past.
- username923409 4y ago
  At least high school- and college-aged people do.
- daniel_reetz 4y ago
  I had my first intern last summer - she's going to college this fall. She used Snapchat throughout the day to communicate with friends. I asked why-- it's non-public, informal, and low-friction in social terms (easier to ask for snap than a phone number). I got the sense that she was continuously lightly dropping in to various group conversations, while simultaneously talking to close friends, often by simply recording reactions on camera. I've never used Snap so forgive any ignorance on my part.
  - qchris 4y ago
    This is pretty close to my own experience. I actively use Snapchat more than any other social platform because in many ways, it's not really a social "platform", in the same way that Instagram or Facebook or Tiktok are platforms. There are some people that use it that way, but largely, Snapchat is a convenient way of ephemeral, low-friction way to include a few people into your life. A picture here, a link to a cool article there, to a few friends at a time in a non-public way (very few people use it to cultivate an online persona in the way the above platforms encourage) that disappears within a day or so unless explicitly saved.
- Brystephor 4y ago
  I use it every day as my primary method of talking to non family members. That's been true for at least a year, probably about 3-4 years now. Texting is not nearly as engaging. So much of communication is visual and tone. Emojis can only go so far
- MattGaiser 4y ago
  I am just a bit older than heavy users of snapchat. My year in university somewhat used it. The year after us were heavy daily users.
- zwieback 4y ago
  My whole family (parents in their 50s, kids in 20s), we use it for fun and family group chats. When it was new it became the defacto IM standard in the kids' age group and it just stuck. Save for straight SMS, which pre-paid users don't like, it's the least obnoxious of the IMish tools, I think. Outside of the US I mostly use WhatsApp, I suspect if that (or Signal) was more widely used in the US Snapchat would be less popular.
- trellad 4y ago
  Cam girls use it as an upsell, sending dirty pics and sexting. It's great for that sort of flirty business because of the lack of persistence. No receipts.
- rvz 4y ago
  It is more like more humans than bots are using Snapchat. Unlike the rest of the other platforms plagued by tons of bots doing nothing but spamming, scamming, etc its seems to have prevented that and optimised their product to be used by actual humans. It's quite a difference, but isn't surprising to see and may also explain the rise in users, given the unlikelihood of millions of bots ruining and inflating the usage numbers. But once again as I predicted, it is far from dying, [0] or even going to allow itself to getting acquired. [1]. In fact, they are the ones continuing to acquire more companies. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27628706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27628706 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29020758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29020758
  - vmception 4y ago
    > It is more like more humans than bots are using Snapchat. ehhhhhh.... there are LOTTSSS of bots on snapchat. especially if you ever add a pretty person's snap from their dating profile.
- multiplegeorges 4y ago
  The answer is in the article. Young people do. How old are you? No one I know uses it, but that makes sense to me. I'm internet-old now.
  - TremendousJudge 4y ago
    Right, I wasn't implying that I should be in the demographic or anything of the sort. I don't use TikTok either, none of my friends do, but I've heard it mentioned a zillion times (in the media, IRL conversations, etc) in the past year. Same with other big social platforms: reddit, youtube, discord, facebook, instagram, telegram, and so on. Snapchat? nada, I've heard nothing. So it comes as a surprise to me to hear that it's alive and growing, which prompted my question.
    - thtpol 4y ago
      I would put Snapchat above discord and telegram for general public awareness, especially in main stream media coverage
  - Root_Denied 4y ago
    I'm 36 and using it a few times a week, mostly with my much younger siblings in their early 20's. Another family friend who has a daughter got her first smartphone recently, and snapchat was one of the first installs on that device. I used it as well pretty heavily when it first came out to keep in touch with family and friends. Weirdly enough I have an interview with Snap in a few weeks as well. Despite the drop that tech stocks have seen everywhere the last year or so I think it's still a strong company to try and join.
- martinmunk 4y ago
  I'm 31, male, SWE, Danish. I use it a couple of times a day and have done for years. Primarily to keep up with close and loose friends from high school ect. Pictures from friends everyday life that are not necessarily meant to provoke a response still keep you in the loop and not drift apart.
- holler 4y ago
  Lots of people, and I think the narrative that they died when instagram copied stories is sort of bogus. I know way more people who use and have used snapchat than who use Twitter. - Millenial
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jaywalk 4y ago
  It's the only social media I actively use.
- jarboot 4y ago
  I am 25 and from my observations of social media-active people I connect with that were born and are living in the US, it's a split between instagram and snapchat. Many are active on snapchat stories and instagram. My observation is that that IG is more popular with urban, liberal, artistic (people create and/or sell art), style-oriented, older audience. It feels more professional and public, and it's common to follow accounts like celebs, artists, businesses, or generally people you haven't met in person. Artistic and lifestyle people will use IG chat to communicate and connect. For example a yoga studio or music venue may post events there. It feels like it's taking the role of a more image-oriented facebook. The stories are very popular too. Snapchat is (in my observation) more popular with midwestern/rural/suburban people, and the network is more friends of friends or maybe people you met at parties. It's much more casual and it's more likely you have met the people you connect with. Trendy urban people I have met have shunned it for a while and think it's childish, but some are coming back. Either way it's the primary way I communicate with certain contacts besides imessage/sms (mainly through the chat). I'll post something to a story and someone will comment on it or vice versa. Anecdotally snapchat was very popular in high school and early college and then waned, but became more popular again recently for some reason (I'm getting more and more views on my stories than before even though I'm not adding friends that frequently). Also when I talk to foreigners, they see it as a childish thing that was a fad in the 2010s, but people in the US (especially suburban types) are very active on it and have been for a while. I'm bullish on snapchat and it's my largest "fun"/risk investment in a single company because of the stickiness it has with people my age and younger, specifically in a more midwestern rural/suburban demographic. Also the snapmap feature is phenomenal and will be the next thing other tech companies start imitating.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tootie 4y ago
  I can honestly say I don't even know what Snapchat does. It's like chat? I'm a social media grump, but I can't avoid passively absorbing what they do. Snapchat has not entered my consciousness and/or its value can't be easily summarized.
- jasonlotito 4y ago
  42M. I use it. Easy way to chat with people, send quick pics, nothing serious. The ephemeral nature makes it much less of a hassle to communicate with people because that's what communication normally is: ephemeral. My brother and sister-in-law use it, and numerous friends. Easy way to keep up to date on what they are doing without the hassle of FB or IG. Basically, a self-container group of friends that can easily share without hassle.
- heromal 4y ago
  There's a whole world out there outside of the HN neckbeard tech bubble.
anonymouse008 4y ago
Evan had this right - tracking as the primary value prop for advertising is a loser's game. Marketing is much more than just ads, and Snapchat has rebuffed going the easy route, honored by market participants, to uphold this principle. They will be an enduring company because of this. How 'big' of a company is up for debate, but honestly not worth the bits to transmit - they are one of the few, if only, doing good business in the social space.
- cmckn 4y ago
  I think they're making money, sure; but the promoted content on Snapchat is a total tabloid cesspool of click-bait garbage. I'd rather see ads for the Amazon product I bought last week, tbh.
- libertine 4y ago
  >Evan had this right - tracking as the primary value prop for advertising is a loser's game. The problem is that nowadays people mix Direct Marketing with Advertising. Direct Marketing is where there's a need to track. Advertising is about attention, so if Snapchat has the attention of an audience, that alone is extremely valuable for advertising.
illwrks 4y ago
What I've noticed in the past two years... my daughters friends mother had it on her phone, her daughter showed my daughter the app when we were having lunch. They were trying on 'masks' and various filters. The kids get a real kick out of it, and taking pictures of the adults. My wife installed it on her phone, and likewise when we have met other families the kids have done the same. It's not used for any messaging element, just purely as a digital novelty for the kids to pass 15 - 20 minutes while we wait for food. One random occasion led to about 6 families with 7-10 year old kids downloading and using the novelty aspects of the app. I expect the same ripple effect has happened with other children in each of their networks.
- vyrotek 4y ago
  Agreed. I've seen the app used by so many kids as nothing more than a camera toy. The parents didn't actually use the app.
- mandeepj 4y ago
  I find Snapchat app to very complicated and cluttered. I guess it's just me. FB has almost cloned Snap's features into Messenger and Insta. So, do you think - Snap's UX is still far better?
  - Thlom 4y ago
    On Snapchat it’s extremely easy to take a quick photo and send to your friends. Open snap, take photo, edit photo (if you want) and select one or many friends or groups. Doing the same in any other messaging app is slower and more complicated. For me this is the killer feature.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Telegram seems as fast to me but I have groups for friends so I don’t have to do much selection.
  - illwrks 4y ago
    I honestly don't care about their UX as no one I know uses it. It's primary use in my "family life" is as a digital camera toy and for that purpose it's UX must not be that bad because my 8yo daughter is able to find the app, take photos with masks and filter she 'tries on' but not send them to anyone.
thawaya3113 4y ago
I don’t buy Snapchat’s numbers. Their metrics all suggest an inflated user count.
- hbcondo714 4y ago
  How so? They define a Daily Active User "as a registered Snapchat user who opens the Snapchat application at least once during a defined 24-hour period" in their quarterly report: Source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001564408/000156459022015139/snap-10q_20220331.htm#:~:text=We%20define%20a%20DAU%20as%20a%20registered%20Snapchat%20user%20who%20opens%20the%20Snapchat%20application%20at%20least%20once%20during%20a%20defined%2024%2Dhour%20period https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001564408/000156459...
  - liuliu 4y ago
    Snapchat has been more aggressive at push notifications (such as @xxx friend posted a new story!) to move more MAUs / WAUs into DAUs category. These strategies have been employed by other competitors as aggressive as well though. So it is probably still comparable. I would say Snapchat's metrics are more "authentic" a few years ago, but now it is more "comparable".
    - thtpol 4y ago
      To be fair over counting users will affect ARPU as well, no free lunch (and we sorta saw that in the numbers this quarter tbf)
- rvz 4y ago
  > Their metrics all suggest an inflated user count. Evidence?
bradleyjg 4y ago
Millennials, the first generation to grow up with social media, loved broadcasting their lives. Gen Y was more ambivalent. Gen Z kind of hates it. Wait, what? I thought Gen Y was the placeholder name until Millennial stuck. greatest, lost, boomer, gen X, millennial, gen Z
- downrightmike 4y ago
  You are right
- jaywalk 4y ago
  There's a pretty wide gap between the "older Millennials" and the "younger Millennials" which I would assume is what they were trying to address by using "Gen Y" to refer to the younger ones. Although I've never heard that before.
  - gsibble 4y ago
    I've never heard it either but the definition of millennial is like 20 years of births which all had vastly different experiences.
    - jaywalk 4y ago
      Yeah, so much changed in that 20 year span that the beginning and end are very, very different.
me_me_mu_mu 4y ago
I don't mean this to be mean, but do people really believe these active user counts at face value? I personally see these numbers and assume half are bots or controlled marketing accounts to boost viewers or spam comments. Just going off personal experience using these sort of apps.
- olah_1 4y ago
  Certainly there are many, many bots. BUT, I have personally noticed a resurgence in snapchat popularity. It did indeed die, but it came back after (I think) people have gotten burnt out on the super public nature of Instagram. Snapchat is more amenable to having a "persona". If you make an second account on Instagram, Instagram will literally start recommending it to the followers of your main account. So Snapchat just allows for a use case that Instagram simply does not. Instagram is the new Facebook. They are not friendly to being anonymous or pseudonymous.
- ffggvv 4y ago
  the growth is about in line with independent surveys https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media-use-in-2021/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media...
  - thawaya3113 4y ago
    Huh? That chart shows Snapchat usage declining, whereas they have been claiming steady growth. A lot of people on this thread are saying that people are doubting Snapchat’s numbers because they are old. And that’s definitely part of it. But, it’s also all the other metrics that don’t add up. The extremely low revenue per user, for example. Even lower than Twitter, for example, which has very high global penetration (therefore most of their users are from places with much lower costs of living than the US and therefore don’t generate as much as revenue), and has users spread across lower value platforms like the web, as opposed to Snapchat’s app only interface. On a personal level, I know someone whose business placed a bunch of ads in different social media (clothing primarily aimed at college aged women, but with a customer base that ranges from teens to late 20s) and had remarkably low engagement on Snapchat. And all of this is despite Apple signal boosting Snapchat for several events in a row now.
nikolay 4y ago
Seems true as I keep getting a lot of notifications that my friends are joining it.
willio58 4y ago
As a user of Snapchat since high school (now 25), I’m noticing a resurgence in my friends using the platform. I never left because I never joined Instagram due to my distain for Facebook. Snap is a great app to keep in contact with “real” friends. I only have groups with true friends and only watch my friends’ stories.
- hardtke 4y ago
  My teenagers use Snapchat regularly, and Snap Maps seem to be the "killer app" for them. It allows them to see which of their friends are around when they travel or are out and about on the weekends.
  - vmception 4y ago
    I guess thats nice because its cross platform. But do they also use iOS' built in Find My app?
    - edaemon 4y ago
      I think what those groups like about Snap Maps is that it can show not only where your friends are but what they're doing. Imagine if you were having drinks at a bar and a friend posted a snap of them doing the same just a few blocks away -- I'd reach out to meet up with them.
      - vmception 4y ago
        yeah I like that aspect of Snap Maps too but it lacked usefulness when everyone stopped using it no matter how densely populated the area was or where my friends are. I'm glad to know people are using it again and posting relevant snaps. Protip: for those not looking for their own friends specifically, you can/could use snapmaps without a snapchat account, just in your browser and see the feed of whats happening in the heatmap.
  - 12907835202 4y ago
    Having this on Instagram would be awesome. Instead of a feed of stories in an order being able to see thumbnails of stories over a map and clicking around the map would be far more engaging for me. It would also help me alot as a digital nomad/traveller as it would very quickly let me know which friends are in which cities/countries, as opposed to just the same street as others have suggested. Similarly if you want to know what XXX bar or street is like right now you could see public stories from there. Just landed in a city? Browse the Instagram map to get an idea which streets are party to visit/avoid or see random pics of food and think fuck let's go there. I wonder if this is possible via the API?
wepple 4y ago
I’m not up to speed on the social app market, but isn’t TikTok eating their lunch?
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Snapchat is for your own social graph. TikTok explicitly ignores your network. Snapchat is basically a messaging app with a social network twist.
  - wepple 4y ago
    Thanks, makes sense
- jasonlotito 4y ago
  Best way to think about Snap is it's a replacement for normal conversation. Normal conversations are ephemeral. Snap follows that. You take a picture, you show your friends, and that's it. You say something, and that's it. You don't store it somewhere for later. That's it. And once you realize Snap allows you to carry on with that ephemeral experience even when you aren't near, you realize why it does so well.
paul7986 4y ago
Their Cameos stickers are fun ...no other chat app I know offers that. They are jib jab like stickers you can send of yourself and your friend and yourself looking dumb lol Chat is more fun using Snap!
dpweb 4y ago
Do they count it as a daily active user, if I stay logged in, don’t open the app, and the app sends me a notification or something?
ElectronShak 4y ago
Stories seem so obvious right now but wow, that was some creativity from Evan Spiegel. Snapchat is built on genuine innovativeness.
- TheRealNGenius 4y ago
  you corporate shillllll
- coolspot 4y ago
  Was it Evan himself who came up with stories?
  - gsibble 4y ago
    Highly doubt it.
  - aabhay 4y ago
    I disagree with the other reply. I think it was his brainchild, though more recently I've only heard horror stories/shitposts about Evan's management style.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  They used to be a constant good idea machine. Not just stories, but so many innovations in messaging app ux. Still remember kids going effing mad and disrupting schools when they released video chats. Still some of the coolest most Intuitive ux ideas I’ve seen. Not sure how the culture is right now however.
- TheRealNGenius 4y ago
  you come off as a corporate shill
instagary 4y ago
Snapchat was novel because of the ephemeral nature of the messages (and introducing stories). However in the late twenty teens they began focusing of face filters and introducing cringe ads & news networks which made it unusable for me. Good to see they are still thriving though. Compared to Instagram they have maintained to be an app solely to communicate with friends vs. Instagram's philosophy of a feed of edited photos that can cause you to compare yourself to others.
- KSPAtlas 4y ago
  Irc
thesuitonym 4y ago
> Messaging is infamously sticky: once you start messaging in one place it’s rare to go elsewhere to reach the same people. IRC, ICQ/AIM, Y!M, MSN, Skype would all beg to differ.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- cft 4y ago
  Arguably those ones disappeared together with desktop messaging: main use of messaging migrated from desktop to mobile, but they either never developed compelling mobile apps or developed them too late (Skype)
- ramraj07 4y ago
  Every one of them deserved to die, and they died a slow death with no dignity, they had ample time to nut up. Especially msn and Skype.
metadat 4y ago
I haven't thought of Snapchat in many many months. Last time I logged in was only sync my bitmoji avatar. Their chat "experience" really sucks, this article is not even remotely plausible. This is a laughably poor attempt at astroturfed buzz generation.
- KSPAtlas 4y ago
  I was going to use it to chat with some friends but the app is so annoying I decided to leave.
mgh2 4y ago
This sounds like an advert for Snap investors...
Zigurd 4y ago
Social media has low barriers to entry. Several new entrants have grown super-fast and have overtaken incumbents. Facebook was very clever to identify and buy up some of these fast-growing new entrants. This holds lessons for the people who want free speech in social media. There are at least 10 social media apps/sites that say they practice what Elon Musk says should be the norm: Anything legal is allowable speech on social media. And yet i do not see anyone pouring in the same levels of capital that Snapchat and some other newer entrants got. Why not? What is preventing first tier investors from backing these platforms? Why have several of them failed outright? What could turn that around?
- adra 4y ago
  Nobody's willing to pay for the access to use the product and if you want to be the free speech wing of the free speech blah blah them you're going to get popular backlash from people and most notably potential advertisers dollars. I feel like investors have lived through too many years of bad #metoo publicity to turn a blind eye and advertise on platforms with toxic (for many people) content. If you don't charge users and you can't get the high margin ad revenues, who's supporting your unicorn company that just may luck out and dislodge a small segment of the social media landscapes?
- holler 4y ago
  Compelling product > advertised speech philosophy. Are there any serious social networks who overtly advertise as anti-free speech? Making speech the hook when the site looks like a third-rate ripoff of Twitter isn't a winning strategy.
idoh 4y ago
Snap - booming product, public since 2017, so where's the profit? What are they waiting for?
- tibyat 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
52358 4y ago
I wonder how many people here are aware of Snapchat's thriving underground OnlyFans-like ecosystem. I also wonder how much of that is driving Snap's user metrics. As far back as 2014, I remember there being a huge ecosystem of "premium" snaps (sometimes known as "prem(ium) girls"), whereby you would pay the account owner a one time or recurring fee for access to a "premium" snapchat account where the owner posts nudes/etc, essentially OnlyFans-like content. Owner would typically accept payment through any number of ways (paypal/cashapp being most common), and "customer" would provide proof of payment by sending screenshot of receipt that the owner then confirms. The premium account owner would also typically have a free/open account where they would post free content / teasers/etc, essentially marketing/advertising for their premium account. They would sometimes also market their account on Twitter and Reddit and especially Tinder (and one less popular app by the name of Whisper), much like OnlyFans content creators do today. As far as I know, this preceded the popularity of OnlyFans and remains a popular use case for Snapchat. I don't use Snapchat much myself nowadays, but I used to be a customer of many of these premium snaps years ago. When I do log in once in a while, many of these accounts are still active, though some are also advertising their OnlyFans. I think Snap officially bans this practice, but by nature these accounts are private and the owner adds users on a one by one basis, so I don't imagine they get reported a whole lot. The fact that the content is ephemeral surely helps and is probably one of the main reasons the content creators choose Snap as their platform. Snap also tells you when users screenshot your content, which would often result in getting banned from the premium Snap. Unlike OnlyFans, which cannot get in the AppStore and is relegated to being web-only, Snapchat is mobile-only, making it harder for users to download the content, which is another appeal for these "premium" content creators.
- 52358 4y ago
  Some other things to mention: the premium content is almost exclusively in the form of stories, which disappear after 24 hours of course. Sometimes creators offer extra services at an additional fee or if you buy a lifetime membership or whatnot (duck/face rates, custom photos/videos, phone calls, etc), all of which go through the Snap app. Some even have a menu which they re-post on their stories daily ($20 for a custom 3 minute video, $10 for a 5 minute phone call, etc, etc). Sometimes these are also sold as "packages". Photo/video archives in the form of links to folders on mega.nz and similar websites are other assets commonly sold this way.
Ancalagon 4y ago
I really don't buy this. Almost all of my friends, who were prolific snap users in college, have converted away to instagram. Stories are so dead, and despite adding people most of my stories get the same ~15-20 views per 24 hours period. That's all very anecdotal, and so is my next point: I get a new bot or porn spam account adding me once or twice a week, some of which have large karma counts indicating they've been around for a while. So yes all of that is anecdotal but I suspect the bots I'm seeing are just the tip of the iceberg of what is actually making up the growing userbase of the app. Most of the young'ns appear to be on tiktok these days anyways.
- rvz 4y ago
  > Almost all of my friends, who were prolific snap users in college, have converted away to instagram. Anecdotes are not evidence. Is this what it has come to just to make a 'point'? > So yes all of that is anecdotal but I suspect the bots I'm seeing are just the tip of the iceberg of what is actually making up the growing userbase of the app. Most of the young'ns appear to be on tiktok these days anyways. Some social networks have more bots than others. Especially more bots if the product is available as a web page unlike an app-based product which the barrier is higher. Given the security there, I doubt that there are millions of bots actively posing as users on Snapchat, verses the ones anyone encounters on Twitter, TikTok and Instagram. The kids these days are also certainly using TikTok, but clearly that has been banned in some countries. Take India for example, which Snapchat seems to be thriving there. [0] Regardless, I don't like or use either of these products since they are both essentially digital addictive drugs companies manipulating people on what is seen and unseen on their platforms. But I don't see how 'anecdotes' from anyone here hold true when the numbers from the earnings say otherwise. [1][2] [0] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/snap-hits-100-million-monthly-users-in-india-plans-to-double-down-on-commerce/articleshow/87299744.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/snap-hi... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/20/snap-reaches-500-million-monthly-users.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/20/snap-reaches-500-million-mon... [2] https://ca.movies.yahoo.com/snapchat-growing-faster-facebook-twitter-220134643.html https://ca.movies.yahoo.com/snapchat-growing-faster-facebook...
- dlivingston 4y ago
smm11 4y ago
YouTube better change.
Fargoan 4y ago
I'm 34 years old and stopped regularly using Snapchat when I was ¿27? Mostly I used it to split bills with my roommates, but the snapcash feature was removed so I downloaded Cash App. I know I haven't used Snapchat since 2017. I remember this because I was visiting Seattle and viewed geotagged stories to figure out what was going on around town. I deleted the app again when I got back home.
pbuzbee 4y ago
I wish Snapchat had kept its momentum among my friend groups. I much prefer social media where you explicitly choose who to send things to. It feels way more personal than the usual model where you post to your whole network on some public feed. I enjoyed taking a picture/video of something interesting, then quickly choosing which friends would find it amusing. It felt like I was saying, "I think that YOU will like this!" rather than "SOMEONE will like this". And if the recipient wanted to reply, that conversation was one-on-one and more personal. There were other perks too: taking/sending snaps was pretty quick, their ephemeral nature lowered the bar of what you'd send (in a good way), the filters could were fun, and recipients could review snaps at their leisure. Sadly only one or two of my friends are still active on it.
paxys 4y ago
Lots of people showing their age in this thread. The discussion is essentially "I and my social group don't use Snapchat therefore their numbers are fake". If you go talk to people under 25 you will see a very different picture. Snapchat and TikTok are dominating the social media landscape.
- TheAceOfHearts 4y ago
  Does TikTok really remain that popular with the younger generation? I know content creators use it, but I'd expect most kids would prefer to keep content private. Is it really that popular for regular kids? Truthfully, whenever I open Instagram or TikTok it's almost entirely thirst-traps in my timeline. But maybe that's just how the algorithm has been trained for me.
  - sillysaurusx 4y ago
    Not sure about the younger generation, but TikTok is certainly dominating mine. Here are all the TikToks I’ve saved: https://imgur.com/a/YuxWObp https://imgur.com/a/YuxWObp The most interesting part is that “educational” outnumbers “lol” by about 5 to 4. I learn a lot on TikTok — more than Twitter. Of course, HN is still #1 for that (especially for depth) but production quality has been ramping up. TikTok recently emailed 10 minute videos, and it’s a matter of time till they do creator partnerships. The effect is pretty magical. I recently filmed TikTok converting my 70yo parents into users within 5min: https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1515056484668870659?s=21&t=4BaoHkRTvpNJtuYvHIXybg https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1515056484668870659?s=2... To get good algorithm recommendations, you have to use the “not interested” button. (Long press on a video.)
- kaashif 4y ago
  I don't think it's just age - people here have a tendency to live in a tech bubble regardless of age. I'm under 25 and I've never used Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and I think it's because I live in an out-of-touch bubble. Despite ideas that at college you're supposed to meet people different to you, my college experience mainly consisted of me finding "my people" i.e. tech-obsessed nerds who use Reddit, Hacker News, IRC, Signal, and Discord. And that bubble only got more bubbly when I got internships and jobs at tech companies. I don't want to project too hard, but it's easy to see how a site like HN could attract lots of people like that who don't engage with Snapchat regardless of age.
guelo 4y ago
I always cheer for Snapchat just because of the courage it took to turn down Zuckerberg's $3 billion offer in 2013. If you compare Evan Spiegel to Kevin Systrom (Instagram founder), Spiegel is 6 times richer and he didn't have to kowtow to Zuckerberg for all those years. Hopefully that's a lesson to founders to go for it, build something real and don't sell out.
- paxys 4y ago
  It's not as straightforward a comparison. Instagram is still worth 3-5x more than Snapchat today. It's not obvious that they would have seen the same growth had they stayed independent.
  - ladon86 4y ago
    It seems pretty straightforward to me from the perspective of the founder. Would you rather: A) Be worth $6.6bn and have control of your company, with people generally crediting the company's success with your leadership or B) Be worth $1.6bn and have your (former) company be a division of Zuck's empire that's technically worth 3-5x more to shareholders, but (as you just demonstrated) people generally say that it would be worth far less if Facebook hadn't acquired it? I think Kevin Systrom probably doesn't give a shit about how much Instagram contributes to Meta's market cap these days, but I imagine that he _does_ care about the impact of Instagram on global culture. At the $1bn+ level, it's all about power and legacy. Evan Spiegel has retained the power to shape his legacy.
    - heromal 4y ago
      The problem is you don't know in 2012 that these are the two options. Obviously no one with the power of foresight is going to choose option B, so I don't get what point you think you're making.
      - ladon86 4y ago
        * The first comment in this thread applauds the courage to turn down a $3bn acquisition, and suggests that the eventual outcome has vindicated that decision. * The second comment suggests that this vindication is debatable based on Instagram’s valuation being higher than Snapchat’s * I agree with the first comment and disagree with the second comment, so the point I am trying to make is that it the decision to turn down the acquisition was indeed vindicated.
tssva 4y ago
My survey of 1 teenager, my 15 year old daughter, reveals that it is the preferred messaging platform for her friends and others at her school. Due to one of her activities she travels regularly along the east coast and a few times a year to other locations across the US. When she makes friends during the trips the preferred means to stay in touch from both parties is SnapChat. So I tend to believe the numbers being thrown about. She used to make some Tiktok videos and checked it regularly. She hasn't made a video in almost a year and unless something is shared with her never checks the app. This seems to be the trend among most of her friends. When I asked her why it was because everyone's parents are now on Tiktok.
- pm90 4y ago
  It’s funny how it’s always the young at the forefront of new tech and rapidly disappear as soon as their parents start getting on the platform. I kinda get this; I used to be on Facebook a lot, then my parents got on there, then all their age group, and that’s when both the experience started sucking (ads love older people with money) and the interactions started sucking (more weird/angry political nonsense/conspiracy shit). Older people just ruin social media platforms.
  - threeseed 4y ago
    > Older people just ruin social media platforms. Not really. The best parts of Twitter are amongst professional circles where people use their real names and can provide unique insight into topics that you would never get anywhere else. For example all of the open source intelligence with Ukraine or learning about the intricacies of Brexit from actual trade negotiators. Whereas if you look at Reddit right now it is inundated with posts about the Depp/Heard case. And there is a visceral hatred towards Heard which is being driven by socially awkward, young men who are self-radicalising. It's really scary to watch.
    - zmgsabst 4y ago
rattlesnakedave 4y ago
Snapchat is fun for stupid pics between friends that are meant to be ephemeral, and that’s why I like it. It’s the last social platform where my friends are creating the majority of their content posted as opposed to re-sharing something. HOWEVER- their “discover” pane is full of the most repugnant, degenerate, or otherwise braindead bullshit I have ever seen in my life. If I could pay to turn it off permanently they could command a significant sum for me.
- sparkywolf 4y ago
  I swear the discover pane content makes tabloids look like respectable news outlets
- onewayfunction 4y ago
  It feels like their discover pane is what happens when you choose to promote (and generate) content entirely based on optimizing for clicks and ignore any long-term retention or engagement implications
- 0xdeadb00f 4y ago
  My friends (we're in our 20s), also share the same disgust for snapchat's discover page.
- penjelly 4y ago
  I've noticed the discover tab has improved over the last year, its got more "real" shows now. but yeah i still avoid it
kart23 4y ago
I'm in college. I see a lot of people doubting snap's popularity in this thread. Literally everyone has snapchat and most people use it on a daily basis. I do think they provide the overall best group chat experience out of any app, you can just send text if you want, but also save funny pictures or video that people send. And only the good stuff gets saved, so you're usually not dealing with a bunch of clutter and random irrelevant content in the chat's history. The private stories are cool too, but I personally don't use them.
- penjelly 4y ago
  to me Snapchat features feel more like actual real life communications then say... telegram/imessage, it encourages a more personal connection
russellbeattie 4y ago
Some anecdotes about Snap. My 20yo son in college still uses Snap, and I just checked and apparently he still has 3 streaks that are at 1500 days(ish). That's 4+ years of daily Snapping. Snap has apparently become a vital part of dating. Tinder to discover and Snap to chat. That makes sense to a generation used to not having their conversations and selfie messages permanently logged. There's some serious Sugar Baby and OnlyFan action going on as well via Snap. The only time I, as a 50yo, on Tinder get a girl's Snap is when she wants to sell nude pics or talk about an "arrangement". (This is an entirely different topic, but the Zoomers are first generation to grow up with easy 24/7 access to hardcore porn, and I think it has definitely given them different ideas of relationships and sex than previous generations, and I think we haven't even begun to see the long term effects of this. 19yos talking about ENM? Or BDSM preferences? Craziness.) Snap is an amusing generational thing because if I hadn't seen my son using it every day for years, I totally would have dismissed it. It's just an app that I have no use for. No history? I have a horrible memory! That's a nightmare app to me. That's all, just thought I'd share. If you're my age and don't get Snap? That's understandable, just don't dismiss it. To the Zoomers it's part of daily life.
subpixel 4y ago
Just installed Snapchat for first time ever. Big difference between this audience and how I (an old) experience the internet. Up to Facebook (including IG): - share things on the internet After Facebook: - do things _on_ the internet, in real or near-real time - do things _for_ the internet I’m not personally drawn to the post-Facebook experience but I see it as a rather natural progression. The novelty will probably wear off fast, but they keep making teenagers and there are probably few other places your old friends are bound to be.
bspear 4y ago
Am I missing something... or did this article have no new insights? Like yes, Android helped. Yes, messaging is sticky. Nothing new under the sun
andrewzah 4y ago
I find it interesting that snapchat still is used by young people and not really by older people. I remember using it about 10 years ago in highschool, and then college, before I kind of went to nothing and then instagram to keep in touch with some people. I'm 26 now and I know a lot of people that still use it. But unlike facebook/instagram, I don't really know of any people much older than me that started using snapchat.
wodenokoto 4y ago
Facebook used to be a place where you shared with friends, but a mix between putting average number of friends as a KPI and twitter envy the platform is now mostly content aimed at a beyond network audience. Facebook did wise in making messenger it’s own app and opening up for an alternative with more intimate sharing. Adopting stories was a great business move although it seems to be mostly instagram that has story adoption, which ironically is the platform that is most about broadcasting of all of metas platforms.
src 4y ago
Hello HN - I'm an engineering manager at Snap focused on mobile app performance tools. If you're impressed with Snap's product and are an engineer obsessed with mobile performance, hit me up. We're actively hiring in this space!
DarthNebo 4y ago
Literally zero cross platform visibility, mostly just Twitter, IG, Reddit, HN & YouTube.

176 points by kantrowitz 4y ago

TremendousJudge 4y ago

Serious question, who actually uses Snapchat? I haven't heard it mentioned anywhere in at least six months.

searchableguy 4y ago
13-24 year olds. Majority of HN users aren't Snapchat users based on polls I've conducted on the past.
username923409 4y ago
At least high school- and college-aged people do.
daniel_reetz 4y ago
I had my first intern last summer - she's going to college this fall. She used Snapchat throughout the day to communicate with friends. I asked why-- it's non-public, informal, and low-friction in social terms (easier to ask for snap than a phone number). I got the sense that she was continuously lightly dropping in to various group conversations, while simultaneously talking to close friends, often by simply recording reactions on camera. I've never used Snap so forgive any ignorance on my part.
- qchris 4y ago
  This is pretty close to my own experience. I actively use Snapchat more than any other social platform because in many ways, it's not really a social "platform", in the same way that Instagram or Facebook or Tiktok are platforms. There are some people that use it that way, but largely, Snapchat is a convenient way of ephemeral, low-friction way to include a few people into your life. A picture here, a link to a cool article there, to a few friends at a time in a non-public way (very few people use it to cultivate an online persona in the way the above platforms encourage) that disappears within a day or so unless explicitly saved.
Brystephor 4y ago
I use it every day as my primary method of talking to non family members. That's been true for at least a year, probably about 3-4 years now. Texting is not nearly as engaging. So much of communication is visual and tone. Emojis can only go so far
MattGaiser 4y ago
I am just a bit older than heavy users of snapchat. My year in university somewhat used it. The year after us were heavy daily users.
zwieback 4y ago
My whole family (parents in their 50s, kids in 20s), we use it for fun and family group chats. When it was new it became the defacto IM standard in the kids' age group and it just stuck. Save for straight SMS, which pre-paid users don't like, it's the least obnoxious of the IMish tools, I think. Outside of the US I mostly use WhatsApp, I suspect if that (or Signal) was more widely used in the US Snapchat would be less popular.
trellad 4y ago
Cam girls use it as an upsell, sending dirty pics and sexting. It's great for that sort of flirty business because of the lack of persistence. No receipts.
rvz 4y ago
It is more like more humans than bots are using Snapchat. Unlike the rest of the other platforms plagued by tons of bots doing nothing but spamming, scamming, etc its seems to have prevented that and optimised their product to be used by actual humans. It's quite a difference, but isn't surprising to see and may also explain the rise in users, given the unlikelihood of millions of bots ruining and inflating the usage numbers. But once again as I predicted, it is far from dying, [0] or even going to allow itself to getting acquired. [1]. In fact, they are the ones continuing to acquire more companies. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27628706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27628706 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29020758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29020758
- vmception 4y ago
  > It is more like more humans than bots are using Snapchat. ehhhhhh.... there are LOTTSSS of bots on snapchat. especially if you ever add a pretty person's snap from their dating profile.
multiplegeorges 4y ago
The answer is in the article. Young people do. How old are you? No one I know uses it, but that makes sense to me. I'm internet-old now.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  Right, I wasn't implying that I should be in the demographic or anything of the sort. I don't use TikTok either, none of my friends do, but I've heard it mentioned a zillion times (in the media, IRL conversations, etc) in the past year. Same with other big social platforms: reddit, youtube, discord, facebook, instagram, telegram, and so on. Snapchat? nada, I've heard nothing. So it comes as a surprise to me to hear that it's alive and growing, which prompted my question.
  - thtpol 4y ago
    I would put Snapchat above discord and telegram for general public awareness, especially in main stream media coverage
- Root_Denied 4y ago
  I'm 36 and using it a few times a week, mostly with my much younger siblings in their early 20's. Another family friend who has a daughter got her first smartphone recently, and snapchat was one of the first installs on that device. I used it as well pretty heavily when it first came out to keep in touch with family and friends. Weirdly enough I have an interview with Snap in a few weeks as well. Despite the drop that tech stocks have seen everywhere the last year or so I think it's still a strong company to try and join.
martinmunk 4y ago
I'm 31, male, SWE, Danish. I use it a couple of times a day and have done for years. Primarily to keep up with close and loose friends from high school ect. Pictures from friends everyday life that are not necessarily meant to provoke a response still keep you in the loop and not drift apart.
holler 4y ago
Lots of people, and I think the narrative that they died when instagram copied stories is sort of bogus. I know way more people who use and have used snapchat than who use Twitter. - Millenial
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jaywalk 4y ago
It's the only social media I actively use.
jarboot 4y ago
I am 25 and from my observations of social media-active people I connect with that were born and are living in the US, it's a split between instagram and snapchat. Many are active on snapchat stories and instagram. My observation is that that IG is more popular with urban, liberal, artistic (people create and/or sell art), style-oriented, older audience. It feels more professional and public, and it's common to follow accounts like celebs, artists, businesses, or generally people you haven't met in person. Artistic and lifestyle people will use IG chat to communicate and connect. For example a yoga studio or music venue may post events there. It feels like it's taking the role of a more image-oriented facebook. The stories are very popular too. Snapchat is (in my observation) more popular with midwestern/rural/suburban people, and the network is more friends of friends or maybe people you met at parties. It's much more casual and it's more likely you have met the people you connect with. Trendy urban people I have met have shunned it for a while and think it's childish, but some are coming back. Either way it's the primary way I communicate with certain contacts besides imessage/sms (mainly through the chat). I'll post something to a story and someone will comment on it or vice versa. Anecdotally snapchat was very popular in high school and early college and then waned, but became more popular again recently for some reason (I'm getting more and more views on my stories than before even though I'm not adding friends that frequently). Also when I talk to foreigners, they see it as a childish thing that was a fad in the 2010s, but people in the US (especially suburban types) are very active on it and have been for a while. I'm bullish on snapchat and it's my largest "fun"/risk investment in a single company because of the stickiness it has with people my age and younger, specifically in a more midwestern rural/suburban demographic. Also the snapmap feature is phenomenal and will be the next thing other tech companies start imitating.
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tootie 4y ago
I can honestly say I don't even know what Snapchat does. It's like chat? I'm a social media grump, but I can't avoid passively absorbing what they do. Snapchat has not entered my consciousness and/or its value can't be easily summarized.
jasonlotito 4y ago
42M. I use it. Easy way to chat with people, send quick pics, nothing serious. The ephemeral nature makes it much less of a hassle to communicate with people because that's what communication normally is: ephemeral. My brother and sister-in-law use it, and numerous friends. Easy way to keep up to date on what they are doing without the hassle of FB or IG. Basically, a self-container group of friends that can easily share without hassle.
heromal 4y ago
There's a whole world out there outside of the HN neckbeard tech bubble.

anonymouse008 4y ago

Evan had this right - tracking as the primary value prop for advertising is a loser's game. Marketing is much more than just ads, and Snapchat has rebuffed going the easy route, honored by market participants, to uphold this principle. They will be an enduring company because of this. How 'big' of a company is up for debate, but honestly not worth the bits to transmit - they are one of the few, if only, doing good business in the social space.

cmckn 4y ago
I think they're making money, sure; but the promoted content on Snapchat is a total tabloid cesspool of click-bait garbage. I'd rather see ads for the Amazon product I bought last week, tbh.
libertine 4y ago
>Evan had this right - tracking as the primary value prop for advertising is a loser's game. The problem is that nowadays people mix Direct Marketing with Advertising. Direct Marketing is where there's a need to track. Advertising is about attention, so if Snapchat has the attention of an audience, that alone is extremely valuable for advertising.

illwrks 4y ago

What I've noticed in the past two years... my daughters friends mother had it on her phone, her daughter showed my daughter the app when we were having lunch. They were trying on 'masks' and various filters. The kids get a real kick out of it, and taking pictures of the adults. My wife installed it on her phone, and likewise when we have met other families the kids have done the same. It's not used for any messaging element, just purely as a digital novelty for the kids to pass 15 - 20 minutes while we wait for food. One random occasion led to about 6 families with 7-10 year old kids downloading and using the novelty aspects of the app. I expect the same ripple effect has happened with other children in each of their networks.

vyrotek 4y ago
Agreed. I've seen the app used by so many kids as nothing more than a camera toy. The parents didn't actually use the app.
mandeepj 4y ago
I find Snapchat app to very complicated and cluttered. I guess it's just me. FB has almost cloned Snap's features into Messenger and Insta. So, do you think - Snap's UX is still far better?
- Thlom 4y ago
  On Snapchat it’s extremely easy to take a quick photo and send to your friends. Open snap, take photo, edit photo (if you want) and select one or many friends or groups. Doing the same in any other messaging app is slower and more complicated. For me this is the killer feature.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Telegram seems as fast to me but I have groups for friends so I don’t have to do much selection.
- illwrks 4y ago
  I honestly don't care about their UX as no one I know uses it. It's primary use in my "family life" is as a digital camera toy and for that purpose it's UX must not be that bad because my 8yo daughter is able to find the app, take photos with masks and filter she 'tries on' but not send them to anyone.

thawaya3113 4y ago

I don’t buy Snapchat’s numbers. Their metrics all suggest an inflated user count.

hbcondo714 4y ago
How so? They define a Daily Active User "as a registered Snapchat user who opens the Snapchat application at least once during a defined 24-hour period" in their quarterly report: Source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001564408/000156459022015139/snap-10q_20220331.htm#:~:text=We%20define%20a%20DAU%20as%20a%20registered%20Snapchat%20user%20who%20opens%20the%20Snapchat%20application%20at%20least%20once%20during%20a%20defined%2024%2Dhour%20period https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001564408/000156459...
- liuliu 4y ago
  Snapchat has been more aggressive at push notifications (such as @xxx friend posted a new story!) to move more MAUs / WAUs into DAUs category. These strategies have been employed by other competitors as aggressive as well though. So it is probably still comparable. I would say Snapchat's metrics are more "authentic" a few years ago, but now it is more "comparable".
  - thtpol 4y ago
    To be fair over counting users will affect ARPU as well, no free lunch (and we sorta saw that in the numbers this quarter tbf)
rvz 4y ago
> Their metrics all suggest an inflated user count. Evidence?

bradleyjg 4y ago

Millennials, the first generation to grow up with social media, loved broadcasting their lives. Gen Y was more ambivalent. Gen Z kind of hates it. Wait, what? I thought Gen Y was the placeholder name until Millennial stuck. greatest, lost, boomer, gen X, millennial, gen Z

downrightmike 4y ago
You are right
jaywalk 4y ago
There's a pretty wide gap between the "older Millennials" and the "younger Millennials" which I would assume is what they were trying to address by using "Gen Y" to refer to the younger ones. Although I've never heard that before.
- gsibble 4y ago
  I've never heard it either but the definition of millennial is like 20 years of births which all had vastly different experiences.
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    Yeah, so much changed in that 20 year span that the beginning and end are very, very different.

me_me_mu_mu 4y ago

I don't mean this to be mean, but do people really believe these active user counts at face value? I personally see these numbers and assume half are bots or controlled marketing accounts to boost viewers or spam comments. Just going off personal experience using these sort of apps.

olah_1 4y ago
Certainly there are many, many bots. BUT, I have personally noticed a resurgence in snapchat popularity. It did indeed die, but it came back after (I think) people have gotten burnt out on the super public nature of Instagram. Snapchat is more amenable to having a "persona". If you make an second account on Instagram, Instagram will literally start recommending it to the followers of your main account. So Snapchat just allows for a use case that Instagram simply does not. Instagram is the new Facebook. They are not friendly to being anonymous or pseudonymous.
ffggvv 4y ago
the growth is about in line with independent surveys https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media-use-in-2021/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media...
- thawaya3113 4y ago
  Huh? That chart shows Snapchat usage declining, whereas they have been claiming steady growth. A lot of people on this thread are saying that people are doubting Snapchat’s numbers because they are old. And that’s definitely part of it. But, it’s also all the other metrics that don’t add up. The extremely low revenue per user, for example. Even lower than Twitter, for example, which has very high global penetration (therefore most of their users are from places with much lower costs of living than the US and therefore don’t generate as much as revenue), and has users spread across lower value platforms like the web, as opposed to Snapchat’s app only interface. On a personal level, I know someone whose business placed a bunch of ads in different social media (clothing primarily aimed at college aged women, but with a customer base that ranges from teens to late 20s) and had remarkably low engagement on Snapchat. And all of this is despite Apple signal boosting Snapchat for several events in a row now.

nikolay 4y ago

Seems true as I keep getting a lot of notifications that my friends are joining it.

willio58 4y ago

As a user of Snapchat since high school (now 25), I’m noticing a resurgence in my friends using the platform. I never left because I never joined Instagram due to my distain for Facebook. Snap is a great app to keep in contact with “real” friends. I only have groups with true friends and only watch my friends’ stories.

hardtke 4y ago
My teenagers use Snapchat regularly, and Snap Maps seem to be the "killer app" for them. It allows them to see which of their friends are around when they travel or are out and about on the weekends.
- vmception 4y ago
  I guess thats nice because its cross platform. But do they also use iOS' built in Find My app?
  - edaemon 4y ago
    I think what those groups like about Snap Maps is that it can show not only where your friends are but what they're doing. Imagine if you were having drinks at a bar and a friend posted a snap of them doing the same just a few blocks away -- I'd reach out to meet up with them.
    - vmception 4y ago
      yeah I like that aspect of Snap Maps too but it lacked usefulness when everyone stopped using it no matter how densely populated the area was or where my friends are. I'm glad to know people are using it again and posting relevant snaps. Protip: for those not looking for their own friends specifically, you can/could use snapmaps without a snapchat account, just in your browser and see the feed of whats happening in the heatmap.
- 12907835202 4y ago
  Having this on Instagram would be awesome. Instead of a feed of stories in an order being able to see thumbnails of stories over a map and clicking around the map would be far more engaging for me. It would also help me alot as a digital nomad/traveller as it would very quickly let me know which friends are in which cities/countries, as opposed to just the same street as others have suggested. Similarly if you want to know what XXX bar or street is like right now you could see public stories from there. Just landed in a city? Browse the Instagram map to get an idea which streets are party to visit/avoid or see random pics of food and think fuck let's go there. I wonder if this is possible via the API?

wepple 4y ago

I’m not up to speed on the social app market, but isn’t TikTok eating their lunch?

colinmhayes 4y ago
Snapchat is for your own social graph. TikTok explicitly ignores your network. Snapchat is basically a messaging app with a social network twist.
- wepple 4y ago
  Thanks, makes sense
jasonlotito 4y ago
Best way to think about Snap is it's a replacement for normal conversation. Normal conversations are ephemeral. Snap follows that. You take a picture, you show your friends, and that's it. You say something, and that's it. You don't store it somewhere for later. That's it. And once you realize Snap allows you to carry on with that ephemeral experience even when you aren't near, you realize why it does so well.

paul7986 4y ago

Their Cameos stickers are fun ...no other chat app I know offers that. They are jib jab like stickers you can send of yourself and your friend and yourself looking dumb lol Chat is more fun using Snap!

dpweb 4y ago

Do they count it as a daily active user, if I stay logged in, don’t open the app, and the app sends me a notification or something?

ElectronShak 4y ago

Stories seem so obvious right now but wow, that was some creativity from Evan Spiegel. Snapchat is built on genuine innovativeness.

TheRealNGenius 4y ago
you corporate shillllll
coolspot 4y ago
Was it Evan himself who came up with stories?
- gsibble 4y ago
  Highly doubt it.
- aabhay 4y ago
  I disagree with the other reply. I think it was his brainchild, though more recently I've only heard horror stories/shitposts about Evan's management style.
ramraj07 4y ago
They used to be a constant good idea machine. Not just stories, but so many innovations in messaging app ux. Still remember kids going effing mad and disrupting schools when they released video chats. Still some of the coolest most Intuitive ux ideas I’ve seen. Not sure how the culture is right now however.
TheRealNGenius 4y ago
you come off as a corporate shill

instagary 4y ago

Snapchat was novel because of the ephemeral nature of the messages (and introducing stories). However in the late twenty teens they began focusing of face filters and introducing cringe ads & news networks which made it unusable for me. Good to see they are still thriving though. Compared to Instagram they have maintained to be an app solely to communicate with friends vs. Instagram's philosophy of a feed of edited photos that can cause you to compare yourself to others.

KSPAtlas 4y ago
Irc

thesuitonym 4y ago

> Messaging is infamously sticky: once you start messaging in one place it’s rare to go elsewhere to reach the same people. IRC, ICQ/AIM, Y!M, MSN, Skype would all beg to differ.

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cft 4y ago
Arguably those ones disappeared together with desktop messaging: main use of messaging migrated from desktop to mobile, but they either never developed compelling mobile apps or developed them too late (Skype)
ramraj07 4y ago
Every one of them deserved to die, and they died a slow death with no dignity, they had ample time to nut up. Especially msn and Skype.

metadat 4y ago

I haven't thought of Snapchat in many many months. Last time I logged in was only sync my bitmoji avatar. Their chat "experience" really sucks, this article is not even remotely plausible. This is a laughably poor attempt at astroturfed buzz generation.

KSPAtlas 4y ago
I was going to use it to chat with some friends but the app is so annoying I decided to leave.

mgh2 4y ago

This sounds like an advert for Snap investors...

Zigurd 4y ago

Social media has low barriers to entry. Several new entrants have grown super-fast and have overtaken incumbents. Facebook was very clever to identify and buy up some of these fast-growing new entrants. This holds lessons for the people who want free speech in social media. There are at least 10 social media apps/sites that say they practice what Elon Musk says should be the norm: Anything legal is allowable speech on social media. And yet i do not see anyone pouring in the same levels of capital that Snapchat and some other newer entrants got. Why not? What is preventing first tier investors from backing these platforms? Why have several of them failed outright? What could turn that around?

adra 4y ago
Nobody's willing to pay for the access to use the product and if you want to be the free speech wing of the free speech blah blah them you're going to get popular backlash from people and most notably potential advertisers dollars. I feel like investors have lived through too many years of bad #metoo publicity to turn a blind eye and advertise on platforms with toxic (for many people) content. If you don't charge users and you can't get the high margin ad revenues, who's supporting your unicorn company that just may luck out and dislodge a small segment of the social media landscapes?
holler 4y ago
Compelling product > advertised speech philosophy. Are there any serious social networks who overtly advertise as anti-free speech? Making speech the hook when the site looks like a third-rate ripoff of Twitter isn't a winning strategy.

idoh 4y ago

Snap - booming product, public since 2017, so where's the profit? What are they waiting for?

tibyat 4y ago
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52358 4y ago

I wonder how many people here are aware of Snapchat's thriving underground OnlyFans-like ecosystem. I also wonder how much of that is driving Snap's user metrics. As far back as 2014, I remember there being a huge ecosystem of "premium" snaps (sometimes known as "prem(ium) girls"), whereby you would pay the account owner a one time or recurring fee for access to a "premium" snapchat account where the owner posts nudes/etc, essentially OnlyFans-like content. Owner would typically accept payment through any number of ways (paypal/cashapp being most common), and "customer" would provide proof of payment by sending screenshot of receipt that the owner then confirms. The premium account owner would also typically have a free/open account where they would post free content / teasers/etc, essentially marketing/advertising for their premium account. They would sometimes also market their account on Twitter and Reddit and especially Tinder (and one less popular app by the name of Whisper), much like OnlyFans content creators do today. As far as I know, this preceded the popularity of OnlyFans and remains a popular use case for Snapchat. I don't use Snapchat much myself nowadays, but I used to be a customer of many of these premium snaps years ago. When I do log in once in a while, many of these accounts are still active, though some are also advertising their OnlyFans. I think Snap officially bans this practice, but by nature these accounts are private and the owner adds users on a one by one basis, so I don't imagine they get reported a whole lot. The fact that the content is ephemeral surely helps and is probably one of the main reasons the content creators choose Snap as their platform. Snap also tells you when users screenshot your content, which would often result in getting banned from the premium Snap. Unlike OnlyFans, which cannot get in the AppStore and is relegated to being web-only, Snapchat is mobile-only, making it harder for users to download the content, which is another appeal for these "premium" content creators.

52358 4y ago
Some other things to mention: the premium content is almost exclusively in the form of stories, which disappear after 24 hours of course. Sometimes creators offer extra services at an additional fee or if you buy a lifetime membership or whatnot (duck/face rates, custom photos/videos, phone calls, etc), all of which go through the Snap app. Some even have a menu which they re-post on their stories daily ($20 for a custom 3 minute video, $10 for a 5 minute phone call, etc, etc). Sometimes these are also sold as "packages". Photo/video archives in the form of links to folders on mega.nz and similar websites are other assets commonly sold this way.

Ancalagon 4y ago

I really don't buy this. Almost all of my friends, who were prolific snap users in college, have converted away to instagram. Stories are so dead, and despite adding people most of my stories get the same ~15-20 views per 24 hours period. That's all very anecdotal, and so is my next point: I get a new bot or porn spam account adding me once or twice a week, some of which have large karma counts indicating they've been around for a while. So yes all of that is anecdotal but I suspect the bots I'm seeing are just the tip of the iceberg of what is actually making up the growing userbase of the app. Most of the young'ns appear to be on tiktok these days anyways.

rvz 4y ago
> Almost all of my friends, who were prolific snap users in college, have converted away to instagram. Anecdotes are not evidence. Is this what it has come to just to make a 'point'? > So yes all of that is anecdotal but I suspect the bots I'm seeing are just the tip of the iceberg of what is actually making up the growing userbase of the app. Most of the young'ns appear to be on tiktok these days anyways. Some social networks have more bots than others. Especially more bots if the product is available as a web page unlike an app-based product which the barrier is higher. Given the security there, I doubt that there are millions of bots actively posing as users on Snapchat, verses the ones anyone encounters on Twitter, TikTok and Instagram. The kids these days are also certainly using TikTok, but clearly that has been banned in some countries. Take India for example, which Snapchat seems to be thriving there. [0] Regardless, I don't like or use either of these products since they are both essentially digital addictive drugs companies manipulating people on what is seen and unseen on their platforms. But I don't see how 'anecdotes' from anyone here hold true when the numbers from the earnings say otherwise. [1][2] [0] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/snap-hits-100-million-monthly-users-in-india-plans-to-double-down-on-commerce/articleshow/87299744.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/snap-hi... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/20/snap-reaches-500-million-monthly-users.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/20/snap-reaches-500-million-mon... [2] https://ca.movies.yahoo.com/snapchat-growing-faster-facebook-twitter-220134643.html https://ca.movies.yahoo.com/snapchat-growing-faster-facebook...
dlivingston 4y ago

smm11 4y ago

YouTube better change.

Fargoan 4y ago

I'm 34 years old and stopped regularly using Snapchat when I was ¿27? Mostly I used it to split bills with my roommates, but the snapcash feature was removed so I downloaded Cash App. I know I haven't used Snapchat since 2017. I remember this because I was visiting Seattle and viewed geotagged stories to figure out what was going on around town. I deleted the app again when I got back home.

pbuzbee 4y ago

I wish Snapchat had kept its momentum among my friend groups. I much prefer social media where you explicitly choose who to send things to. It feels way more personal than the usual model where you post to your whole network on some public feed. I enjoyed taking a picture/video of something interesting, then quickly choosing which friends would find it amusing. It felt like I was saying, "I think that YOU will like this!" rather than "SOMEONE will like this". And if the recipient wanted to reply, that conversation was one-on-one and more personal. There were other perks too: taking/sending snaps was pretty quick, their ephemeral nature lowered the bar of what you'd send (in a good way), the filters could were fun, and recipients could review snaps at their leisure. Sadly only one or two of my friends are still active on it.

paxys 4y ago

Lots of people showing their age in this thread. The discussion is essentially "I and my social group don't use Snapchat therefore their numbers are fake". If you go talk to people under 25 you will see a very different picture. Snapchat and TikTok are dominating the social media landscape.

TheAceOfHearts 4y ago
Does TikTok really remain that popular with the younger generation? I know content creators use it, but I'd expect most kids would prefer to keep content private. Is it really that popular for regular kids? Truthfully, whenever I open Instagram or TikTok it's almost entirely thirst-traps in my timeline. But maybe that's just how the algorithm has been trained for me.
- sillysaurusx 4y ago
  Not sure about the younger generation, but TikTok is certainly dominating mine. Here are all the TikToks I’ve saved: https://imgur.com/a/YuxWObp https://imgur.com/a/YuxWObp The most interesting part is that “educational” outnumbers “lol” by about 5 to 4. I learn a lot on TikTok — more than Twitter. Of course, HN is still #1 for that (especially for depth) but production quality has been ramping up. TikTok recently emailed 10 minute videos, and it’s a matter of time till they do creator partnerships. The effect is pretty magical. I recently filmed TikTok converting my 70yo parents into users within 5min: https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1515056484668870659?s=21&t=4BaoHkRTvpNJtuYvHIXybg https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1515056484668870659?s=2... To get good algorithm recommendations, you have to use the “not interested” button. (Long press on a video.)
kaashif 4y ago
I don't think it's just age - people here have a tendency to live in a tech bubble regardless of age. I'm under 25 and I've never used Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and I think it's because I live in an out-of-touch bubble. Despite ideas that at college you're supposed to meet people different to you, my college experience mainly consisted of me finding "my people" i.e. tech-obsessed nerds who use Reddit, Hacker News, IRC, Signal, and Discord. And that bubble only got more bubbly when I got internships and jobs at tech companies. I don't want to project too hard, but it's easy to see how a site like HN could attract lots of people like that who don't engage with Snapchat regardless of age.

guelo 4y ago

I always cheer for Snapchat just because of the courage it took to turn down Zuckerberg's $3 billion offer in 2013. If you compare Evan Spiegel to Kevin Systrom (Instagram founder), Spiegel is 6 times richer and he didn't have to kowtow to Zuckerberg for all those years. Hopefully that's a lesson to founders to go for it, build something real and don't sell out.

paxys 4y ago
It's not as straightforward a comparison. Instagram is still worth 3-5x more than Snapchat today. It's not obvious that they would have seen the same growth had they stayed independent.
- ladon86 4y ago
  It seems pretty straightforward to me from the perspective of the founder. Would you rather: A) Be worth $6.6bn and have control of your company, with people generally crediting the company's success with your leadership or B) Be worth $1.6bn and have your (former) company be a division of Zuck's empire that's technically worth 3-5x more to shareholders, but (as you just demonstrated) people generally say that it would be worth far less if Facebook hadn't acquired it? I think Kevin Systrom probably doesn't give a shit about how much Instagram contributes to Meta's market cap these days, but I imagine that he _does_ care about the impact of Instagram on global culture. At the $1bn+ level, it's all about power and legacy. Evan Spiegel has retained the power to shape his legacy.
  - heromal 4y ago
    The problem is you don't know in 2012 that these are the two options. Obviously no one with the power of foresight is going to choose option B, so I don't get what point you think you're making.
    - ladon86 4y ago
      * The first comment in this thread applauds the courage to turn down a $3bn acquisition, and suggests that the eventual outcome has vindicated that decision. * The second comment suggests that this vindication is debatable based on Instagram’s valuation being higher than Snapchat’s * I agree with the first comment and disagree with the second comment, so the point I am trying to make is that it the decision to turn down the acquisition was indeed vindicated.

tssva 4y ago

My survey of 1 teenager, my 15 year old daughter, reveals that it is the preferred messaging platform for her friends and others at her school. Due to one of her activities she travels regularly along the east coast and a few times a year to other locations across the US. When she makes friends during the trips the preferred means to stay in touch from both parties is SnapChat. So I tend to believe the numbers being thrown about. She used to make some Tiktok videos and checked it regularly. She hasn't made a video in almost a year and unless something is shared with her never checks the app. This seems to be the trend among most of her friends. When I asked her why it was because everyone's parents are now on Tiktok.

pm90 4y ago
It’s funny how it’s always the young at the forefront of new tech and rapidly disappear as soon as their parents start getting on the platform. I kinda get this; I used to be on Facebook a lot, then my parents got on there, then all their age group, and that’s when both the experience started sucking (ads love older people with money) and the interactions started sucking (more weird/angry political nonsense/conspiracy shit). Older people just ruin social media platforms.
- threeseed 4y ago
  > Older people just ruin social media platforms. Not really. The best parts of Twitter are amongst professional circles where people use their real names and can provide unique insight into topics that you would never get anywhere else. For example all of the open source intelligence with Ukraine or learning about the intricacies of Brexit from actual trade negotiators. Whereas if you look at Reddit right now it is inundated with posts about the Depp/Heard case. And there is a visceral hatred towards Heard which is being driven by socially awkward, young men who are self-radicalising. It's really scary to watch.
  - zmgsabst 4y ago

rattlesnakedave 4y ago

Snapchat is fun for stupid pics between friends that are meant to be ephemeral, and that’s why I like it. It’s the last social platform where my friends are creating the majority of their content posted as opposed to re-sharing something. HOWEVER- their “discover” pane is full of the most repugnant, degenerate, or otherwise braindead bullshit I have ever seen in my life. If I could pay to turn it off permanently they could command a significant sum for me.

sparkywolf 4y ago
I swear the discover pane content makes tabloids look like respectable news outlets
onewayfunction 4y ago
It feels like their discover pane is what happens when you choose to promote (and generate) content entirely based on optimizing for clicks and ignore any long-term retention or engagement implications
0xdeadb00f 4y ago
My friends (we're in our 20s), also share the same disgust for snapchat's discover page.
penjelly 4y ago
I've noticed the discover tab has improved over the last year, its got more "real" shows now. but yeah i still avoid it

kart23 4y ago

I'm in college. I see a lot of people doubting snap's popularity in this thread. Literally everyone has snapchat and most people use it on a daily basis. I do think they provide the overall best group chat experience out of any app, you can just send text if you want, but also save funny pictures or video that people send. And only the good stuff gets saved, so you're usually not dealing with a bunch of clutter and random irrelevant content in the chat's history. The private stories are cool too, but I personally don't use them.

penjelly 4y ago
to me Snapchat features feel more like actual real life communications then say... telegram/imessage, it encourages a more personal connection

russellbeattie 4y ago

Some anecdotes about Snap. My 20yo son in college still uses Snap, and I just checked and apparently he still has 3 streaks that are at 1500 days(ish). That's 4+ years of daily Snapping. Snap has apparently become a vital part of dating. Tinder to discover and Snap to chat. That makes sense to a generation used to not having their conversations and selfie messages permanently logged. There's some serious Sugar Baby and OnlyFan action going on as well via Snap. The only time I, as a 50yo, on Tinder get a girl's Snap is when she wants to sell nude pics or talk about an "arrangement". (This is an entirely different topic, but the Zoomers are first generation to grow up with easy 24/7 access to hardcore porn, and I think it has definitely given them different ideas of relationships and sex than previous generations, and I think we haven't even begun to see the long term effects of this. 19yos talking about ENM? Or BDSM preferences? Craziness.) Snap is an amusing generational thing because if I hadn't seen my son using it every day for years, I totally would have dismissed it. It's just an app that I have no use for. No history? I have a horrible memory! That's a nightmare app to me. That's all, just thought I'd share. If you're my age and don't get Snap? That's understandable, just don't dismiss it. To the Zoomers it's part of daily life.

subpixel 4y ago

Just installed Snapchat for first time ever. Big difference between this audience and how I (an old) experience the internet. Up to Facebook (including IG): - share things on the internet After Facebook: - do things _on_ the internet, in real or near-real time - do things _for_ the internet I’m not personally drawn to the post-Facebook experience but I see it as a rather natural progression. The novelty will probably wear off fast, but they keep making teenagers and there are probably few other places your old friends are bound to be.

bspear 4y ago

Am I missing something... or did this article have no new insights? Like yes, Android helped. Yes, messaging is sticky. Nothing new under the sun

andrewzah 4y ago

I find it interesting that snapchat still is used by young people and not really by older people. I remember using it about 10 years ago in highschool, and then college, before I kind of went to nothing and then instagram to keep in touch with some people. I'm 26 now and I know a lot of people that still use it. But unlike facebook/instagram, I don't really know of any people much older than me that started using snapchat.

wodenokoto 4y ago

Facebook used to be a place where you shared with friends, but a mix between putting average number of friends as a KPI and twitter envy the platform is now mostly content aimed at a beyond network audience. Facebook did wise in making messenger it’s own app and opening up for an alternative with more intimate sharing. Adopting stories was a great business move although it seems to be mostly instagram that has story adoption, which ironically is the platform that is most about broadcasting of all of metas platforms.

src 4y ago

Hello HN - I'm an engineering manager at Snap focused on mobile app performance tools. If you're impressed with Snap's product and are an engineer obsessed with mobile performance, hit me up. We're actively hiring in this space!

DarthNebo 4y ago

Literally zero cross platform visibility, mostly just Twitter, IG, Reddit, HN & YouTube.