9 ms·

Snap Out of It: Kids Aren't Reliable Tech Predictors

88 points by dkasper 13y ago

therobot24 13y ago
The article reads like a jealous 30-something founder/ceo/evangelist/whatever_is_trendy writing off snap-chat as a 'boy-band'. Facebook offering $3 Billion shows that snap-chat is indeed starting to eat facebook's lunch (future users)...you know facebook, the company geared toward teens, college kids, and in the last few years, older adults. So maybe the article is right, kids aren't indicators toward the future of tech (kindle, ipod, whatever), but they are indicators of the multi-billion dollar market that exists for them that Facebook current resides within. The author needs to throw out the "i know more than you" attitude and look at the market that snap-chat has either created (facebook not gearing toward teens) or is stealing. This should especially ring with HN, as everything i've read here is about how if you have some crazy idea there's probably a market for it.
- goldenkey 13y ago
  SnapChat is the tech equivalent of a boy-band. The very idea of sending something that only lasts a few seconds is snarky, and really only appeals to immature folk, ie. snarky kids. I'm okay with not being part of the kid crowd, or basing my evaluations on a volatile age group, after all, I've grown up and I'm much more _stable_ now.
  - RaphiePS 13y ago
    The value I get out of it is the ability to be completely unfiltered. I carefully manage what I post to facebook, because a) it's going out to a lot of people and b) it's there forever. I even felt slightly uneasy with G+'s Circles--even if I'm targeting my posts, I still feel pressure. I try to make my photos look nice, post statuses that people will actually like, and generally keep things "pristine." Snapchat removes all this pressure, and because of that, I find it a joy to use.
    - fennecfoxen 13y ago
      That's wonderful. But the value you get out of it and the value an investor gets out of it are two very different matters. A price of $3 billion demands something like $120 million^ in profit, annually, in perpetuity... or more, if there's significant risk in the business plan like "we assume we will get that money in the future and are not making any of that money now". (^ using a S&P500-ish 4% real discount rate here, to keep things simple)
      - RaphiePS 13y ago
        Of course, I think the company is massively overvalued. One thing I think they do have, however, is really strong engagement. Whenever I browse facebook or twitter, I'm very detached. I'm probably even working on something else. It's the same as when I occasionally watch TV -- half attention at best. With Snapchat, I've got laser-focus. Whatever I'm looking at is going away in seconds and will never come back, so it's got a special urgency. I'm sure it won't be easy to convert this into revenue, but I believe that engagement is special.
    - bandushrew 13y ago
      At the risk of stating the obvious, if you are sending pictures (or text) via snap chat that you do not want the world to see, then you are making a mistake. It is trivially easy to capture screenshots from any screen, and the 'protection' that snapshot puts in place does absolutely nothing to stop this. I would think twice before trusting that anything you post is not going to be widely available.
      - RaphiePS 13y ago
        I'm not sending anything racy or inappropriate. They're just not photos I would want on my facebook, which is very much a "curated" representation of myself. It's great for photos that are badly-lit, or inane, or make me look unattractive, or related to some sort of in-joke, or that only make sense in the moment. I wouldn't be mortified if any of them were released; they just don't make sense on my carefully-tended social media profiles. The draw, at least for me, is not covertness or secrecy. It's a form of expression that doesn't demand the "does this really belong on my public profile?" test, which is really liberating.
  - shortstuffsushi 13y ago
    I'm not really sure I agree with the "snarky" sentiment, but I do agree in some sense that it is equivalent to a boy band. The end value (since the content is so momentary) is pretty fleeting, and (not a business export here, but) there doesn't really seem to be any way to monetize this sort of thing. In that sense, this app (and apps like it) can't really be any sort of long term.
  - therobot24 13y ago
    how does this address any part of my rebuttle? You said you're not the demographic and don't understand why it's popular, thus the service is a 'boy-band' equivalent of the startup world.
- johnjlocke 13y ago
  If having a huge exit is the goal of SnapChat, hopefully they will not regret the decision to turn down 3 billion. Longevity in social platforms is a bit of the exception, not the rule. Time will tell if Snapchat has legs or not.
danso 13y ago
Other things that kids have flocked to that haven't quite panned out as long-term, large-impact businesses: Formspring, Livejournal, Xanga, Chatroulette, Fart sound apps, snap bracelets There's nothing inherently wise about what a kid thinks is a worthwhile thing to do. I can only guess that those who target them know the power of peer pressure, so if you get many kids roped into your product, then you'll get many, many kids -- and presumably, their parents. Other than that, hard to see the wisdom in pre-adult crowds.
thornkin 13y ago
What this means is that kids' tastes change and as they grow up, so will their tastes. Being popular with kids does not the next Facebook make. Instead, you are more likely to be ChatRoulette, MySpace, LiveJournal, etc.
na85 13y ago
Ehh, I feel like this is written from the perspective of the investment industry, who foolishly pumped money into the incredibly-overvalued Facebook IPO. No dismissive hand-waving can account for the fact that Facebook has little room to grow, and next to no goodwill among younger users. Anecdotally, I can say that by far the largest users of facebook on my feed are 50-somethings posting the sort of libertarian pseudo-intellectual shit I used to get forwarded to me in emails by my grandparents. Kids might not be reliable tech predictors but if they aren't adopting your product with no room to grow outside the Kid Demographic, then good luck to you.
- enjo 13y ago
  Ehh, I feel like this is written from the perspective of the investment industry, who foolishly pumped money into the incredibly-overvalued Facebook IPO. How was the Facebook IPO overvalued? The stock has increased 28.9% since the IPO.
  - pmarca 13y ago
    Stop with the facts! You're screwing up the discussion.
  - XorNot 13y ago
    It lost money at first, sharply, and at the moment the Price/Earnings is sitting at ~80. Google is about ~30 and arguably in a similar industry. That's a lot of money Facebook is not making for a service which is struggling with monetization.
    - vinceguidry 13y ago
      P/E seems to be a completely useless metric when it comes to the web.
moinnadeem 13y ago
As a 16 year old, the main use for Snapchat is a photo sharing service. Students take a picture of themselves, caption it, and send it to their friend(s). Think of IM but with a photo attached to each message. However, the conversation is based off of a photo, and only used for short conversations. Awkward phrasing but get what I mean? However, at the same time, teens are more willing to send racy photos if sent over snapchat. They just view this as an added bonus, not the core feature though.
- forsaken 13y ago
  Thanks for the perspective. Understanding how things are perceived by others is an incredibly hard thing to do.
- defen 13y ago
  So, it sounds like you're saying a fundamental use case is "sending illegal pictures", which seems like it will eventually result in a devastating lawsuit / prosecution.
  - immad 13y ago
    He didn't say that at all
  - gum_ina_package 13y ago
    That's not at all what he's saying. He said that teens user SnapChat to send photos that aren't super important or need to be shared in the future.
  - 001sky 13y ago
    Er, "not the core feature" seems clear enough.
  - tantalor 13y ago
    That might happen if their privacy/security systems fail and everybody's dick pics are exposed. They don't store data and probably actively purge it, but they might be eavesdropped. That's almost certainly already happening, though.
drpgq 13y ago
I'm never really been a fan of Farhad Manjoo's writing when he was at Slate and now he's jumped to WSJ. Hopefully his replacement at Slate is better.
6ren 13y ago
Please cite examples of technologies that kids embraced and did not become successful.
- yen223 13y ago
  I remember a time when every other teenager had a Livejournal blog.
  - coralreef 13y ago
    Blogging is still quite popular, just in a different form and platform. Whatever you might have shared can now be shared as a FB post, Tweet, or Tumblr.
    - tantalor 13y ago
      And now that platform have shifted to Snapchat, but FB, TWRT, YHOO are mostly still in business.
- tantalor 13y ago
  The article mentioned MySpace. I'd add AIM which was killed by SMS.
- rsheridan6 13y ago
  Xanga.
pcurve 13y ago
"How many of the products and services that you use every day were created or first used primarily by people under 25?" And the author goes onto mention how Google, youtube, twitter, gmail, pinterest were never targeted under 25. Maybe so, but under 25 were certainly the early adopters of them. The author failed to make a decent case for his argument befitting of the link baiting headline.
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  I'd quip that the fact that the author fails to make a decent case for his argument is befitting of an article that uses a link baiting headline ;)
  - pcurve 13y ago
    I would have to agree with you on that one. lol
- bowlofpetunias 13y ago
  No, the early adopters are actually usually 30+. It actually took Twitter a long time before reaching a younger audience.
desireco42 13y ago
Of course kids are good predictors. They have time and enthusiasm to discover something new that will allow them to communicate, alternative channel. When it becomes mainstream, they will leave, like they are leaving fb. Does SnapChat is really worth 3bn or more, nobody knows for sure.
mariusz331 13y ago
How do you think this would affect Snapchat?: Apple or Google adding a self-destruct feature to text/picture messages. Interested in getting some opinions.
pmarca 13y ago
Any minute now, all of this inconvenient, annoying change will stop and things will go back to the way they used to be, when adults writing for newspapers headquartered in New York decided what people think!
- ghayes 13y ago
  Yet, the Internet was pioneered by adults. I don't think he's saying let's go back to what it used to be; I think he's saying, let's not assume any latest fad is the future.
  - pmarca 13y ago
    Let's go back to the 1960s when only adults had access to computers! Adults with really, really long beards.
    - seanlinehan 13y ago
      Either beards or full suit-and-tie a la IBM.
- pmarca 13y ago
  Snapchat launch: September 2011 First mention of Snapchat in WSJ: August 2013 First negative mention of Snapchat in WSJ: October 2013 There has to be a name for this phenomenon.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    "Irellevancy until some absurd valuation"?
    - reinhardt 13y ago
      "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they acquire you, then you win."
calbear81 13y ago
I've been following fashion bloggers more closely as I believe they are a huge part of the success of services like Tumblr and Pinterest. I can remember when I first heard of Pinterest was because some blogs my girlfriend followed posted links to these new-fangled "photo pinboards" and a year later everyone was using it. I'm not saying that fashion bloggers or kids for that matter are always right but perhaps there's something about the environment in college that makes services that are catered to these people much more likely to spread (the desire to fit in, to look cool with the next new thing, etc.). On the fashion front, tastemakers will be tastemakers, as much as the HN crowd may not be the target audience, fashion/style are important to a lot of folks.
001sky 13y ago
Something is wrong with the premise of this article. It goes on to say that most companies that mad it huge were not "initially popular" with young people. But that is a bit of a sleight of hand for two reasons: (1) many of those businesses were <invented> or revolutionized by young people or students; and (2) it ignores the role that young people played in the discovery/momentum/tipping point to their widespread adoption. In otherwords, the two most critical parts of their value realization. Lastly (3) is the category of items that were or are only relevant in the land where (1) and (2) already happend. These are essentially "derivative works" in terms of their core value. Things like LinkedIn (derives value from FB proven use case); and Gmail (widely adopted and propogated through google) etc. come readily to mind. Out of context, they would likely be worth an order of magnitude less than they are perceived today. Once you eliminate all that, there is really not much left in the article. The premise and idea may still have value, but whatever value that is must be found using different examples and explanartions, IMHO.
skrebbel 13y ago
Am I alone in the conspiracy theory that SnapChat's founders are just pranking us for the heck of it? "We're 23, we can code just fine, the worst thing that can happen if this all goes south is that we get a job somewhere."
- lmm 13y ago
  If they're turning down ~$300m each for the sake of a prank that's some serious dedication.
clarky07 13y ago
I think kids can be reliable tech predictors, but you have to look at the service and why the kids like it. Is it something that also translates reasonably with adults? Facebook started with college kids, and the value seemed obvious to me at the time. I was not surprised at all that people continued to use it after college and that other adults joined when it opened up. Snapchat on the other hand, doesn't seem to have the same kind of value proposition. The thing it seems to be used for is teenagers sending things they don't want adults to see. As a general rule, this is something they will grow out of, and not something that will spill over. I have no use for snapchat, and I'm quite confident that I never will. Now, obviously Snapchat has a lot of users and they are sending a lot of messages, but that doesn't mean it will grow into mainstream adult usage. Lucky for them, we keep making new teenagers every day.
bowlofpetunias 13y ago
I agree with the headline, but the argument is crap. Kids aren't reliable predictors because of a few fundamental lifestyle differences with adults: they don't spend much of their day working away from their friends, and their social network is usually within physically short range. For kids, everything in their lives happens within a short space of time within a small radius. What works for kids may never work for adults, including the adults they will become, and vice versa. So it's hard to tell whether the popularity of something amongst kids is a sign of a social change, or just a kids thing. (The latter not necessarily making it a fad, it could work for multiple generations of kids.) Of course the even less reliable interpreters of such signs are old school dead tree journalists...
- VLM 13y ago
  I would agree with your list with one critical addition... kids primarily only socialize with kids +/- about one year of age, which is critical because all their friends know, understand, and probably like the same idiotic clothing/music/media/tech fads they like, simply because they're the same age and grew up together in the same location. Kids are strictly uni-cultural. There is just The Culture (apologies to ian banks). On the other hand adult social areas like HN cover from lower teens to retired and are international (even though HN is mostly SV) So when I was a HS senior, 100% of my friends knew about, and most of them liked, the same idiotic music and clothing I liked. On the other hand, on HN only a tiny fraction of the audience would even recognize certain band names I thought were cool. The lack of individuality of kids has enormous social media implications. Inherently there are going to be social media fads which work very well among identical interchangeable kids that are simply impossible for multicultural adults to understand. Not just "short space of time small radius" but also nearly identical age/maturity level and very similar socioeconomic class and basically mono-cultural. In other words high school and college are pretty much the opposite of the real world, which is not exactly news, but...
  - caw 13y ago
    > kids primarily only socialize with kids +/- about one year of age This was a huge realization for me after getting into the "real world". I suddenly had coworkers who had kids as old as I am. At times I felt like I had more in common with their kids than them, because they would mention things that happened before I was even born. I had worked at other jobs before, but excluding the managers, everyone was around my age. In school, even 5 years seemed like a huge gap--"Wow, he's in college, I'm still in High School!", doesn't seem like that much.
yeukhon 13y ago
> There is only one problem with elevating young people's tastes this way: Kids are often wrong. There is little evidence to support the idea that the youth have any closer insight on the future than the rest of us do. And we grew out as kids and we actually were the one pushed social network and youtube to its fullness. High school kids and young college undergraduates are kids right? I remember Youtube back in 2005 when I was a freshman in HS. I agree that buying snapchat is a risky investment. In fact, I am not really sure if that's going to make Facebook stronger. What is Facebook lacking? One of my friends today said "John I like the new Facebook messenger update. It's pretty!" I agree with my friend the messenger app is getting better. But what is taking Facebook down? It's the way we share photo and videos. Frankly as someone who tries to become a successful security engineer, I can be lazy and agree to FB tracking me as long as my money isn't stolen. I can accept that and try to keep as little sensitive personal data like whether I am still a virgin away from the Internet. I can do that. Kids like me just want to enjoy socializing with friends and the Internet as much as possible. So if you own things like Instgram or whatever social app you have, integrate that fully into your product. Why is GIF still not supported in Facebook? I heard they used to support gif in the early days of Facebook. I am not saying there is an easy solution. I don't know and don't think anyone has any idea what would be the coolest yet functional comfortable interface Facebook should have. We need to focus on what people want to see. Facebook, GMail they are just becoming everyday's gadget. It is not exciting. Snapshot is exciting, maybe. Maybe it will continue but I know people soon or later will change to another one. We need to look at what FB messenger can't do that snapchat can.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >And we grew out as kids and we actually were the one pushed social network and youtube to its fullness. Not really. Youtube catters to all demographics and all ages. If there ever was a social network to speak to 50+ and 60+ as well as 20+ this would be it. So, no, there wasn't some swarth of "high school kids" and "young college undergraduates" pushing it to its fullness (what would that be?)
  - lmm 13y ago
    The first popular youtubers back in '06 absolutely were "some swarth of "high school kids" and "young college undergraduates"". It found its way to other demographics and ages later.
wellboy 13y ago
I think the author doesn't know how to prove a hypothesis that's why the article is confusing. He tries to prove that kids are not predictors of successful startups, but then he cites successful startups that were popular with adults. That's not how you make a prove, you can't make a prove of x causing y by showing that z causes y. For this article to make sense, the author has to find out if the ratio of successful startups that were initially popular with kids is higher that the one of successful startups that were initially popular with adults. Example: If 30% of startups that were initially popular with kids became successful and 42% of startups that were initially popular with adults became successful, then his hypothesis holds true. That's how you prove a hypothesis, but not at all the way the author did it.
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
I love cranky old guy columns, especially when the author is self-aware enough to point it out. Very nicely done. Having said that, the problem we have with startups is stated rather simply: startups do not succeed or fail based on somebody's ability to argue whether they make sense or not. That's why these beauty contests masquerading as business plan competitions or swimming with the sharks or whatever are such bullshit. It's not about whether you can make a reasoned argument one way or the other. It's about market traction. That's it. Now everybody and their brother wants to play armchair epidemiologist. What are the "risk" factors associated with startups? Do the youth really play out? What should team sizes be? And so on. And no doubt some of these tidbits of data are actually showing promise. But arguments like this always fall flat, which, incidentally, is one of the reasons that HN "rate my startup" comments need to be taken with a huge grain of salt. You don't reason your way to success. You test your way there.

88 points by dkasper 13y ago

The article reads like a jealous 30-something founder/ceo/evangelist/whatever_is_trendy writing off snap-chat as a 'boy-band'. Facebook offering $3 Billion shows that snap-chat is indeed starting to eat facebook's lunch (future users)...you know facebook, the company geared toward teens, college kids, and in the last few years, older adults. So maybe the article is right, kids aren't indicators toward the future of tech (kindle, ipod, whatever), but they are indicators of the multi-billion dollar market that exists for them that Facebook current resides within. The author needs to throw out the "i know more than you" attitude and look at the market that snap-chat has either created (facebook not gearing toward teens) or is stealing. This should especially ring with HN, as everything i've read here is about how if you have some crazy idea there's probably a market for it.

goldenkey 13y ago
SnapChat is the tech equivalent of a boy-band. The very idea of sending something that only lasts a few seconds is snarky, and really only appeals to immature folk, ie. snarky kids. I'm okay with not being part of the kid crowd, or basing my evaluations on a volatile age group, after all, I've grown up and I'm much more _stable_ now.
- RaphiePS 13y ago
  The value I get out of it is the ability to be completely unfiltered. I carefully manage what I post to facebook, because a) it's going out to a lot of people and b) it's there forever. I even felt slightly uneasy with G+'s Circles--even if I'm targeting my posts, I still feel pressure. I try to make my photos look nice, post statuses that people will actually like, and generally keep things "pristine." Snapchat removes all this pressure, and because of that, I find it a joy to use.
  - fennecfoxen 13y ago
    That's wonderful. But the value you get out of it and the value an investor gets out of it are two very different matters. A price of $3 billion demands something like $120 million^ in profit, annually, in perpetuity... or more, if there's significant risk in the business plan like "we assume we will get that money in the future and are not making any of that money now". (^ using a S&P500-ish 4% real discount rate here, to keep things simple)
    - RaphiePS 13y ago
      Of course, I think the company is massively overvalued. One thing I think they do have, however, is really strong engagement. Whenever I browse facebook or twitter, I'm very detached. I'm probably even working on something else. It's the same as when I occasionally watch TV -- half attention at best. With Snapchat, I've got laser-focus. Whatever I'm looking at is going away in seconds and will never come back, so it's got a special urgency. I'm sure it won't be easy to convert this into revenue, but I believe that engagement is special.
  - bandushrew 13y ago
    At the risk of stating the obvious, if you are sending pictures (or text) via snap chat that you do not want the world to see, then you are making a mistake. It is trivially easy to capture screenshots from any screen, and the 'protection' that snapshot puts in place does absolutely nothing to stop this. I would think twice before trusting that anything you post is not going to be widely available.
    - RaphiePS 13y ago
      I'm not sending anything racy or inappropriate. They're just not photos I would want on my facebook, which is very much a "curated" representation of myself. It's great for photos that are badly-lit, or inane, or make me look unattractive, or related to some sort of in-joke, or that only make sense in the moment. I wouldn't be mortified if any of them were released; they just don't make sense on my carefully-tended social media profiles. The draw, at least for me, is not covertness or secrecy. It's a form of expression that doesn't demand the "does this really belong on my public profile?" test, which is really liberating.
- shortstuffsushi 13y ago
  I'm not really sure I agree with the "snarky" sentiment, but I do agree in some sense that it is equivalent to a boy band. The end value (since the content is so momentary) is pretty fleeting, and (not a business export here, but) there doesn't really seem to be any way to monetize this sort of thing. In that sense, this app (and apps like it) can't really be any sort of long term.
- therobot24 13y ago
  how does this address any part of my rebuttle? You said you're not the demographic and don't understand why it's popular, thus the service is a 'boy-band' equivalent of the startup world.
johnjlocke 13y ago
If having a huge exit is the goal of SnapChat, hopefully they will not regret the decision to turn down 3 billion. Longevity in social platforms is a bit of the exception, not the rule. Time will tell if Snapchat has legs or not.

danso 13y ago

Other things that kids have flocked to that haven't quite panned out as long-term, large-impact businesses: Formspring, Livejournal, Xanga, Chatroulette, Fart sound apps, snap bracelets There's nothing inherently wise about what a kid thinks is a worthwhile thing to do. I can only guess that those who target them know the power of peer pressure, so if you get many kids roped into your product, then you'll get many, many kids -- and presumably, their parents. Other than that, hard to see the wisdom in pre-adult crowds.

thornkin 13y ago

What this means is that kids' tastes change and as they grow up, so will their tastes. Being popular with kids does not the next Facebook make. Instead, you are more likely to be ChatRoulette, MySpace, LiveJournal, etc.

na85 13y ago

Ehh, I feel like this is written from the perspective of the investment industry, who foolishly pumped money into the incredibly-overvalued Facebook IPO. No dismissive hand-waving can account for the fact that Facebook has little room to grow, and next to no goodwill among younger users. Anecdotally, I can say that by far the largest users of facebook on my feed are 50-somethings posting the sort of libertarian pseudo-intellectual shit I used to get forwarded to me in emails by my grandparents. Kids might not be reliable tech predictors but if they aren't adopting your product with no room to grow outside the Kid Demographic, then good luck to you.

enjo 13y ago
Ehh, I feel like this is written from the perspective of the investment industry, who foolishly pumped money into the incredibly-overvalued Facebook IPO. How was the Facebook IPO overvalued? The stock has increased 28.9% since the IPO.
- pmarca 13y ago
  Stop with the facts! You're screwing up the discussion.
- XorNot 13y ago
  It lost money at first, sharply, and at the moment the Price/Earnings is sitting at ~80. Google is about ~30 and arguably in a similar industry. That's a lot of money Facebook is not making for a service which is struggling with monetization.
  - vinceguidry 13y ago
    P/E seems to be a completely useless metric when it comes to the web.

moinnadeem 13y ago

As a 16 year old, the main use for Snapchat is a photo sharing service. Students take a picture of themselves, caption it, and send it to their friend(s). Think of IM but with a photo attached to each message. However, the conversation is based off of a photo, and only used for short conversations. Awkward phrasing but get what I mean? However, at the same time, teens are more willing to send racy photos if sent over snapchat. They just view this as an added bonus, not the core feature though.

forsaken 13y ago
Thanks for the perspective. Understanding how things are perceived by others is an incredibly hard thing to do.
defen 13y ago
So, it sounds like you're saying a fundamental use case is "sending illegal pictures", which seems like it will eventually result in a devastating lawsuit / prosecution.
- immad 13y ago
  He didn't say that at all
- gum_ina_package 13y ago
  That's not at all what he's saying. He said that teens user SnapChat to send photos that aren't super important or need to be shared in the future.
- 001sky 13y ago
  Er, "not the core feature" seems clear enough.
- tantalor 13y ago
  That might happen if their privacy/security systems fail and everybody's dick pics are exposed. They don't store data and probably actively purge it, but they might be eavesdropped. That's almost certainly already happening, though.

drpgq 13y ago

I'm never really been a fan of Farhad Manjoo's writing when he was at Slate and now he's jumped to WSJ. Hopefully his replacement at Slate is better.

6ren 13y ago

Please cite examples of technologies that kids embraced and did not become successful.

yen223 13y ago
I remember a time when every other teenager had a Livejournal blog.
- coralreef 13y ago
  Blogging is still quite popular, just in a different form and platform. Whatever you might have shared can now be shared as a FB post, Tweet, or Tumblr.
  - tantalor 13y ago
    And now that platform have shifted to Snapchat, but FB, TWRT, YHOO are mostly still in business.
tantalor 13y ago
The article mentioned MySpace. I'd add AIM which was killed by SMS.
rsheridan6 13y ago
Xanga.

pcurve 13y ago

"How many of the products and services that you use every day were created or first used primarily by people under 25?" And the author goes onto mention how Google, youtube, twitter, gmail, pinterest were never targeted under 25. Maybe so, but under 25 were certainly the early adopters of them. The author failed to make a decent case for his argument befitting of the link baiting headline.

hkmurakami 13y ago
I'd quip that the fact that the author fails to make a decent case for his argument is befitting of an article that uses a link baiting headline ;)
- pcurve 13y ago
  I would have to agree with you on that one. lol
bowlofpetunias 13y ago
No, the early adopters are actually usually 30+. It actually took Twitter a long time before reaching a younger audience.

desireco42 13y ago

Of course kids are good predictors. They have time and enthusiasm to discover something new that will allow them to communicate, alternative channel. When it becomes mainstream, they will leave, like they are leaving fb. Does SnapChat is really worth 3bn or more, nobody knows for sure.

mariusz331 13y ago

How do you think this would affect Snapchat?: Apple or Google adding a self-destruct feature to text/picture messages. Interested in getting some opinions.

pmarca 13y ago

Any minute now, all of this inconvenient, annoying change will stop and things will go back to the way they used to be, when adults writing for newspapers headquartered in New York decided what people think!

ghayes 13y ago
Yet, the Internet was pioneered by adults. I don't think he's saying let's go back to what it used to be; I think he's saying, let's not assume any latest fad is the future.
- pmarca 13y ago
  Let's go back to the 1960s when only adults had access to computers! Adults with really, really long beards.
  - seanlinehan 13y ago
    Either beards or full suit-and-tie a la IBM.
pmarca 13y ago
Snapchat launch: September 2011 First mention of Snapchat in WSJ: August 2013 First negative mention of Snapchat in WSJ: October 2013 There has to be a name for this phenomenon.
- coldtea 13y ago
  "Irellevancy until some absurd valuation"?
  - reinhardt 13y ago
    "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they acquire you, then you win."

calbear81 13y ago

I've been following fashion bloggers more closely as I believe they are a huge part of the success of services like Tumblr and Pinterest. I can remember when I first heard of Pinterest was because some blogs my girlfriend followed posted links to these new-fangled "photo pinboards" and a year later everyone was using it. I'm not saying that fashion bloggers or kids for that matter are always right but perhaps there's something about the environment in college that makes services that are catered to these people much more likely to spread (the desire to fit in, to look cool with the next new thing, etc.). On the fashion front, tastemakers will be tastemakers, as much as the HN crowd may not be the target audience, fashion/style are important to a lot of folks.

001sky 13y ago

Something is wrong with the premise of this article. It goes on to say that most companies that mad it huge were not "initially popular" with young people. But that is a bit of a sleight of hand for two reasons: (1) many of those businesses were <invented> or revolutionized by young people or students; and (2) it ignores the role that young people played in the discovery/momentum/tipping point to their widespread adoption. In otherwords, the two most critical parts of their value realization. Lastly (3) is the category of items that were or are only relevant in the land where (1) and (2) already happend. These are essentially "derivative works" in terms of their core value. Things like LinkedIn (derives value from FB proven use case); and Gmail (widely adopted and propogated through google) etc. come readily to mind. Out of context, they would likely be worth an order of magnitude less than they are perceived today. Once you eliminate all that, there is really not much left in the article. The premise and idea may still have value, but whatever value that is must be found using different examples and explanartions, IMHO.

skrebbel 13y ago

Am I alone in the conspiracy theory that SnapChat's founders are just pranking us for the heck of it? "We're 23, we can code just fine, the worst thing that can happen if this all goes south is that we get a job somewhere."

lmm 13y ago
If they're turning down ~$300m each for the sake of a prank that's some serious dedication.

clarky07 13y ago

I think kids can be reliable tech predictors, but you have to look at the service and why the kids like it. Is it something that also translates reasonably with adults? Facebook started with college kids, and the value seemed obvious to me at the time. I was not surprised at all that people continued to use it after college and that other adults joined when it opened up. Snapchat on the other hand, doesn't seem to have the same kind of value proposition. The thing it seems to be used for is teenagers sending things they don't want adults to see. As a general rule, this is something they will grow out of, and not something that will spill over. I have no use for snapchat, and I'm quite confident that I never will. Now, obviously Snapchat has a lot of users and they are sending a lot of messages, but that doesn't mean it will grow into mainstream adult usage. Lucky for them, we keep making new teenagers every day.

bowlofpetunias 13y ago

I agree with the headline, but the argument is crap. Kids aren't reliable predictors because of a few fundamental lifestyle differences with adults: they don't spend much of their day working away from their friends, and their social network is usually within physically short range. For kids, everything in their lives happens within a short space of time within a small radius. What works for kids may never work for adults, including the adults they will become, and vice versa. So it's hard to tell whether the popularity of something amongst kids is a sign of a social change, or just a kids thing. (The latter not necessarily making it a fad, it could work for multiple generations of kids.) Of course the even less reliable interpreters of such signs are old school dead tree journalists...

VLM 13y ago
I would agree with your list with one critical addition... kids primarily only socialize with kids +/- about one year of age, which is critical because all their friends know, understand, and probably like the same idiotic clothing/music/media/tech fads they like, simply because they're the same age and grew up together in the same location. Kids are strictly uni-cultural. There is just The Culture (apologies to ian banks). On the other hand adult social areas like HN cover from lower teens to retired and are international (even though HN is mostly SV) So when I was a HS senior, 100% of my friends knew about, and most of them liked, the same idiotic music and clothing I liked. On the other hand, on HN only a tiny fraction of the audience would even recognize certain band names I thought were cool. The lack of individuality of kids has enormous social media implications. Inherently there are going to be social media fads which work very well among identical interchangeable kids that are simply impossible for multicultural adults to understand. Not just "short space of time small radius" but also nearly identical age/maturity level and very similar socioeconomic class and basically mono-cultural. In other words high school and college are pretty much the opposite of the real world, which is not exactly news, but...
- caw 13y ago
  > kids primarily only socialize with kids +/- about one year of age This was a huge realization for me after getting into the "real world". I suddenly had coworkers who had kids as old as I am. At times I felt like I had more in common with their kids than them, because they would mention things that happened before I was even born. I had worked at other jobs before, but excluding the managers, everyone was around my age. In school, even 5 years seemed like a huge gap--"Wow, he's in college, I'm still in High School!", doesn't seem like that much.

yeukhon 13y ago

> There is only one problem with elevating young people's tastes this way: Kids are often wrong. There is little evidence to support the idea that the youth have any closer insight on the future than the rest of us do. And we grew out as kids and we actually were the one pushed social network and youtube to its fullness. High school kids and young college undergraduates are kids right? I remember Youtube back in 2005 when I was a freshman in HS. I agree that buying snapchat is a risky investment. In fact, I am not really sure if that's going to make Facebook stronger. What is Facebook lacking? One of my friends today said "John I like the new Facebook messenger update. It's pretty!" I agree with my friend the messenger app is getting better. But what is taking Facebook down? It's the way we share photo and videos. Frankly as someone who tries to become a successful security engineer, I can be lazy and agree to FB tracking me as long as my money isn't stolen. I can accept that and try to keep as little sensitive personal data like whether I am still a virgin away from the Internet. I can do that. Kids like me just want to enjoy socializing with friends and the Internet as much as possible. So if you own things like Instgram or whatever social app you have, integrate that fully into your product. Why is GIF still not supported in Facebook? I heard they used to support gif in the early days of Facebook. I am not saying there is an easy solution. I don't know and don't think anyone has any idea what would be the coolest yet functional comfortable interface Facebook should have. We need to focus on what people want to see. Facebook, GMail they are just becoming everyday's gadget. It is not exciting. Snapshot is exciting, maybe. Maybe it will continue but I know people soon or later will change to another one. We need to look at what FB messenger can't do that snapchat can.

coldtea 13y ago
>And we grew out as kids and we actually were the one pushed social network and youtube to its fullness. Not really. Youtube catters to all demographics and all ages. If there ever was a social network to speak to 50+ and 60+ as well as 20+ this would be it. So, no, there wasn't some swarth of "high school kids" and "young college undergraduates" pushing it to its fullness (what would that be?)
- lmm 13y ago
  The first popular youtubers back in '06 absolutely were "some swarth of "high school kids" and "young college undergraduates"". It found its way to other demographics and ages later.

wellboy 13y ago

I think the author doesn't know how to prove a hypothesis that's why the article is confusing. He tries to prove that kids are not predictors of successful startups, but then he cites successful startups that were popular with adults. That's not how you make a prove, you can't make a prove of x causing y by showing that z causes y. For this article to make sense, the author has to find out if the ratio of successful startups that were initially popular with kids is higher that the one of successful startups that were initially popular with adults. Example: If 30% of startups that were initially popular with kids became successful and 42% of startups that were initially popular with adults became successful, then his hypothesis holds true. That's how you prove a hypothesis, but not at all the way the author did it.

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

I love cranky old guy columns, especially when the author is self-aware enough to point it out. Very nicely done. Having said that, the problem we have with startups is stated rather simply: startups do not succeed or fail based on somebody's ability to argue whether they make sense or not. That's why these beauty contests masquerading as business plan competitions or swimming with the sharks or whatever are such bullshit. It's not about whether you can make a reasoned argument one way or the other. It's about market traction. That's it. Now everybody and their brother wants to play armchair epidemiologist. What are the "risk" factors associated with startups? Do the youth really play out? What should team sizes be? And so on. And no doubt some of these tidbits of data are actually showing promise. But arguments like this always fall flat, which, incidentally, is one of the reasons that HN "rate my startup" comments need to be taken with a huge grain of salt. You don't reason your way to success. You test your way there.