
Snapchat’s Influencers Are Fleeing to Instagram for Money - allenleein
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-07/instagram-embraces-the-influencers-snapchat-spurns?utm_source=wanqu.co&utm_campaign=Wanqu+Daily&utm_medium=website
======
anilshanbhag
I shared your skepticism of Snapchat (I use Instagram pretty often and browse
Facebook multiple times a day - rarely post on it). I recently hopped on the
Snapchat bandwagon and here are a couple of things I really liked:

> Less focus on metrics. There is no likes and you only see views if you
> really want to. This is bad for influencers but I have to give it that it is
> a good break from Instagram/Facebook where people are conscious of likes.

> Its fun. The filters and emoji are better on Snapchat. The maps feature is
> cool - I used it to browse snaps by Harvey/Irma victims. The Discover
> section has crappy publications but there is NYT, Mashable, WSJ, etc. I pay
> for WSJ but I still like to read news in the Snapchat format.

On the downside, the app is buggy and does crash pretty often for a 1.8k
strength company.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
Would you feel like sending snaps if none of your friends sent you snaps or
even replied to them by text message?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Yup. I like being able to share without anyone being obligated to see it.
Sharing on Facebook carries, for me, some social burden--I don't want to
pollute friends' timelines with things only I find fun. But on Snapchat, if
you're watching my Snaps, you chose to swipe left into them. (I really hate
messaging on Snapchat, in part due to its lack of end to end encryption.)

~~~
irahul
I share this sentiment. I dump almost daily photos on whatsapp statuses. I
won't do it on insta or fb(except on their analogous stories/status feature).
I like posting updates but since I don't like when people clutter my wall with
a lot of updates, I don't do it to others. The only people who see my updates
are people who explicitly click on it to see it.

------
m-masa
Snapchat to me is sharing your shaky drunken escapades at 3AM with your
friends to let them know you made it home and survived the night. Instagram
seems more like an endless observation of copy-and-paste, superficial things
and people and places. It's evolved more into a (usually inaccurate) portrayal
of status than anything else.

~~~
foolfoolz
insta has always been the status platform. the pictures are permanent. you
only post your best pics and need a history of just the best. "this is who I
am"

snapchat is fleeting. the quality can be lower. no one is gonna care. and the
fact you have to take the picture then is more exciting than posting any old
pic you found online. "this is what I'm doing"

I can snap you my beer, I'll insta the edited GoPro footage of me cliff
jumping

~~~
burger_moon
This is getting downvotes but it reflects very closely to what I see. I don't
use insta but I go on to browse occasionally of people I follow on snapchat
and it's a stark contrast of what you see on the two. Insta pictures are all
perfect, perfect posing, perfect lighting, and some bs quote or string of
text. Snapchat is the mundane, the normal side of people that I see. People
taking videos in the moment.

I don't use fb live or insta stories so I'm not sure how those end up.

------
vosper
There's got to be a middle-ground between not going after the money as hard as
Facebook, and their customers having no idea whether their spending is
achieving anything. They're living in la-la land if they think they can keep
the latter up, especially with the bad rap a lot of online advertising has
been getting over the last few years. Advertisers need to have some idea of
what's going on in the system, and with Snapchat's novelty fading they're not
going to get away with "trust-us" much longer.

~~~
addicted
The question is if that middle ground can support the $20bn SNAP valuation.

I would put my money on no. Snap seems like a worse version of Twitter IMO.
Less value from a financial and social sense that was ridiculously overvalued
at the IPO.

------
sdfjkl
_> He credits Axe body spray with getting him out of the “friend zone.”_

This makes money? It can't die fast enough.

~~~
test1235
>enough to get paid six figures a year

six. figures.

------
eksemplar
I wonder what will happen to a generation obsessed with idols who don't
contribute anything to society aside from memes, hot bodies and various rants.

But I guess I'm just old and grumpy.

~~~
jedberg
You mean like movie stars? We've had at least four generations now obsessed
with movie stars. It's also been the century of greatest achievement for
humankind.

Correlation isn't causation though. :)

~~~
jonahx
> You mean like movie stars?

Looks get you in the door here, but the large majority of movie stars are
experts in a legitimate art form -- acting.

~~~
jonknee
What do you think social media celebrities are doing?

~~~
jonahx
So you don't see a difference between, say, kim kardashian's instagram feed
and what a top hollywood actress does?

~~~
justboxing
> So you don't see a difference between

Nope. There is no difference. @jonknee is right. I once met this camera grip
boy at a boxing fight watch here in San Francisco. He worked at various sets
in L.A., very close to the filming. He would say how he was on Kim
Kardashian's "Reality Show" and how the whole thing was completely scripted
for shock effect, drama etc. He said "They'd sometime do retakes and tell Kim
- "This time yell at your sister louder, and then throw in a I hate you B*tch
at the end."

They are all actors. The only difference I see is hollywood actors are elite
level, having gone to school, and experienced and top notch, whereas the likes
of Kim Kardashian, that Jersey Shores girl are low end trash, but both types
make a ton of money on 2 different medium - the former in big screen, the
latter on fake "Reality TV shows", and social media (where they get paid to
promote crap).

~~~
pjc50
Interesting tangent here. The growth in "reality" TV was driven by the desire
to ditch a very particular kind of skilled, unionised talent: writers. The
writers' strike caused a wave of these improvised shows that were pretending
not to be acting, they became popular with the public, and the rest is
history.

Kim Kardashian's ethnicity is highly relevant as well. Hollywood is a very
white place. There really aren't all that many opportunities for black
character actresses. Or for people who want a black star to look up to. Kim
fills that gap in the market.

~~~
sortaThrowaway
"people who want a black star to look up to. Kim fills that gap in the
market."

? Not sure what you mean. She isn't black.

Do you mean because Kanye is on there?

~~~
pjc50
.. good point, I can't remember why I thought that; almost certainly to do
with Kanye.

------
na85
Influencers are leaving Snapchat? Fantastic!

Influencers are just advertisers.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yeah. I really hate marketning newspeak.

There exist well-known words that describe this occupation perfectly.
Advertisers. Salesmen.

------
thinbeige
> Wes “Wuz Good” Armstrong has almost 700,000 followers on Instagram, enough
> to get paid six figures a year to promote

Can anyone with insights into Instagram marketing confirm? Do 700k followers
make you min. 100k a year?

~~~
creaghpatr
$7 per follower seems insane- and a certain percent of those accounts are
brands or other non-human?

Edit: had the numbers flipped

~~~
tgb
Sorry, wouldn't it be $1/7 = 14cents per follower?

------
kneel
Not sure why people keep comparing these apps.

Snapchat is a much more person to person app whereas Instagram is a person to
world app.

Not a surprise that money would go into instagram.

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
Snapchat started out as person to person app but at some point decided they
will become person to world app (via snapchat stories), and it was doing well,
to the point where most users use the stories feature more than the 1:1
feature.

Then came Instagram and ate their lunch. Now they can't go back because they
have already IPO'd with the ad-driven business model (instead of somehow
capitalizing on the ephemeral nature of the medium, which would have been much
harder for FB/Instagram to copy).

So yeah, this is why people keep comparing these two.

------
forkLding
Couldn't read whole article because of paywall but I agree, Snapchat has done
certain things to not become Instagram, it will be harder to monetize but it
doesn't disrupt the Snapchat personal feel as compared to Instagram's "Social
Media" feel where your life is always on display.

Moreover, I've started an app, did some questioning and first-year university
students don't even add new friends on Facebook anymore when they come to
university as compared to those who did this the year before. However, they
add each other on Snapchat and follow occasionally on Instagram.

~~~
hack4supper
Here is a summary of the article ... [https://summarybrew.com/posts/snapchat-
s-influencers-are-fle...](https://summarybrew.com/posts/snapchat-s-
influencers-are-fleeing-to-instagram-for-money)

------
sjg007
I think people want person to person as it's more intimate. Then you can have
world to person as well. However it becomes harder for early adopters to scale
out and become mini celebrities etc... but for friend or small groups? Dunno
seems like there is a market.

------
wallflower
I'm sorry for posting this here, in advance. However, this Like/Peer Approval
culture has indirectly contributed to one of the worst wildfires in Oregon's
history.

> A woman who was hiking over the weekend in the Columbia River Gorge said
> Tuesday that she happened across a teenager who threw "a smoke bomb" into
> Eagle Creek Canyon, igniting the now 10,000-acre Eagle Creek fire.

Liz FitzGerald, 48, of Portland said she's fairly certain that she heard the
teenager's friends -- including a boy who was video-recording with his
cellphone and some girls in the group -- giggle as the firework dropped down a
cliff and into the trees below.

[http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-
news/index.ssf/2...](http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-
news/index.ssf/2017/09/witness_teens_giggled_as_they.html)

~~~
Roritharr
I don't think kids have only started doing stupid things when they discovered
Snapchat/Instagram...

~~~
wallflower
I agree and I want to clarify that Snapchat/Instagram/Twitter have created an
amplification such that while kids may have done stupid things in the past,
they are more likely to do it for an audience of their peers. The most
mainstream example being YTers like Jake Paul who has taken MTV's Jackass into
the New Media age. The less common examples being kids who are so self
absorbed in their own world that they fail to take responsibility for what
their actions incur. It is possible these teenagers who started the fire will
escape consequences and (modern fire prevention techniques aside) the true
tragedy is that the actions of a small group of individuals have affected the
larger society irreparably. Like a jackass motorcycle rider weaving between
cars on a major highway at 100+ mph, it is when your actions affect innocent
bystanders that you are no longer just "selfie expressing".

------
mezuzi
Facebook has become a yahoo. Too confusing and the ads are so "intrusive." A
couple days ago, I clicked on what I thought was a photo which turned to be a
daily-mail news story!!! It was confusing. I never used spapchat, but it kinda
sounds like the old facebook which was fun and had a moderate amount of ads.

------
afinlayson
With this, plus Apple ARKit should people start to short SNAP?

~~~
hkmurakami
$SNAP is already heavily shorted with ~17% short interest.

