
Snap Out of It: Kids Aren't Reliable Tech Predictors - dkasper
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303559504579202623459037550
======
bowlofpetunias
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
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
> 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.

~~~
VLM
Another point about kid vs adult socialization is as a HS kid approx 50% of my
classmates were in my possible dating pool, whereas entering the adult world
the possible dating pool evaporated to perhaps 1% or so of my coworkers and
general social network, because so many are happily married, three times my
age, sausagefest male:female ratio, whatever.

So showing off to your social network to get dating attention suddenly becomes
pretty much worthless once you're not a kid anymore, which has a pretty big
impact.

------
danso
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.

------
moinnadeem
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.

~~~
defen
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.

~~~
gum_ina_package
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.

------
pmarca
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
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
Let's go back to the 1960s when only adults had access to computers!

Adults with really, really long beards.

~~~
seanlinehan
Either beards or full suit-and-tie a la IBM.

------
001sky
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.

------
pcurve
"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
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
I would have to agree with you on that one. lol

------
yeukhon
> 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
> _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
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.

~~~
VLM
First line true. Second line completely false.

One side of the argument is virtually all of the users are a multicultural
swath of humanity, mostly adults.

The other side of the argument is the largest unicultural subgroup of users
was in 2006 HS/Uni kids, maybe as much as 5% of total users. The key being
they were the largest single unicultural group.

Both arguments are simultaneously true. There is no point repeating the two
true statements to the "opposite" side.

If you prefer a numerical argument, you've got 1K subgroups with 1K members
each with little overlap, and one 10K member subgroup. The vast majority of
the 1010K members are not in the 10K subgroup but are members of one of many
1K sized subgroups, and it is also simultaneously true that one subgroup is
10x the size of every other subgroup.

------
clarky07
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.

------
wellboy
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.

------
calbear81
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.

------
thornkin
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.

------
6ren
Please cite examples of technologies that kids embraced and did _not_ become
successful.

~~~
yen223
I remember a time when every other teenager had a Livejournal blog.

~~~
coralreef
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
And now that platform have shifted to Snapchat, but FB, TWRT, YHOO are mostly
still in business.

------
drpgq
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.

------
DanielBMarkham
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.

------
mariusz331
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.

------
desireco42
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.

------
skrebbel
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
If they're turning down ~$300m each for the sake of a prank that's some
serious dedication.

------
therobot24
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
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
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.

~~~
bandushrew
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.

~~~
aidanlister
That's a silly hand-wavy thing to say that doesn't reflect how Snapchat is
actually used.

Although it's trivial to take a screenshot, the sender receives an alert
telling them which friend took it. Given snapchat is used for sharing pictures
with your close friends, that puts having your Snapchat made public in the
same probability range as having your mobile phone hacked and pictures posted
online. Sure, it happens, but that's a risk people are obviously willing to
take.

Snapchat provides a mechanism for trusting your friends now without needing to
trust them for infinity.

~~~
bandushrew
(a) it really is trivially easy to work around the notification so it doesn't
get sent.

(b) yep, as you said, even _with_ the notification it is trivially easy for
someone to take any picture that you send and post it to the forever webs.

So, I reiterate, do not send anything via snap chat that you do not wish to
one day become public.

------
na85
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
_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.

~~~
XorNot
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
P/E seems to be a completely useless metric when it comes to the web.

