4 ms·

They need to acquire because the failure of Poke likely has nothing to do with management or political baggage or cost. SnapChat is a brand with users. Not a p

They need to acquire because the failure of Poke likely has nothing to do with management or political baggage or cost. SnapChat is a brand with users. Not a product. The product itself is worth very little.

danso 13y ago
Well I'd argue that it might be political baggage. Is SnapChat's product really worthless? I mean, what it offers -- the ability to casually and anonymously (...or not) send selfies and other private missives -- is clearly valuable to people. And if Facebook buys it just to shut it down, won't people just eventually flock to another service? Or, worse, won't people stop using a FB-owned-and-operated SnapChat precisely because it is owned by FB, and thus has even less of an illusory sense of privacy? And similarly, any FB-managed service has that lack of illusory privacy and casualness...so what does FB accomplish here? The two or so years it takes before people flock to some other non-FB service?
- crystaln 13y ago
  SnapChat's product is not worthless, it just doesn't comprise much of the value of the company. People don't use SnapChat because of the product itself, they use it because of the brand and popularity among their friends. Think about what an exact clone of SnapChat with no users or brand equity would be worth. Probably negative value to most of us, without distribution resources. It would be of some value to Facebook, but getting people to change behavior and gel around a new product is hard, even for Facebook. So yes, the value of SnapChat, and most consumer companies, is not in the product itself.
- objclxt 13y ago
  > Is SnapChat's product really worthless? To Facebook, yes. Facebook managed to throw together a Snapchat clone (Poke) in a couple of weeks. There is no IP, no technology worth acquiring, nothing that couldn't be done in house at very low cost. What Facebook doesn't have is the brand. I suppose you could argue SnapcChat's product is the brand. That's what's valuable. Personally, I think it's a foolish play. As Facebook know well, there's no guarantee SnapChat users won't flock to another service in a few years (let me rephrase that: SnapChat users will flock to another service). And SnapChat currently has no business model to speak of in terms of per-user revenue.
  - crystaln 13y ago
    They also don't have a particularly sticky product. Once people slow down using it, the content literally evaporates. I don't see a lot of upside from $3B, but I've been wrong before...

danso 13y ago

Well I'd argue that it might be political baggage. Is SnapChat's product really worthless? I mean, what it offers -- the ability to casually and anonymously (...or not) send selfies and other private missives -- is clearly valuable to people. And if Facebook buys it just to shut it down, won't people just eventually flock to another service? Or, worse, won't people stop using a FB-owned-and-operated SnapChat precisely because it is owned by FB, and thus has even less of an illusory sense of privacy? And similarly, any FB-managed service has that lack of illusory privacy and casualness...so what does FB accomplish here? The two or so years it takes before people flock to some other non-FB service?

crystaln 13y ago
SnapChat's product is not worthless, it just doesn't comprise much of the value of the company. People don't use SnapChat because of the product itself, they use it because of the brand and popularity among their friends. Think about what an exact clone of SnapChat with no users or brand equity would be worth. Probably negative value to most of us, without distribution resources. It would be of some value to Facebook, but getting people to change behavior and gel around a new product is hard, even for Facebook. So yes, the value of SnapChat, and most consumer companies, is not in the product itself.
objclxt 13y ago
> Is SnapChat's product really worthless? To Facebook, yes. Facebook managed to throw together a Snapchat clone (Poke) in a couple of weeks. There is no IP, no technology worth acquiring, nothing that couldn't be done in house at very low cost. What Facebook doesn't have is the brand. I suppose you could argue SnapcChat's product is the brand. That's what's valuable. Personally, I think it's a foolish play. As Facebook know well, there's no guarantee SnapChat users won't flock to another service in a few years (let me rephrase that: SnapChat users will flock to another service). And SnapChat currently has no business model to speak of in terms of per-user revenue.
- crystaln 13y ago
  They also don't have a particularly sticky product. Once people slow down using it, the content literally evaporates. I don't see a lot of upside from $3B, but I've been wrong before...