
Snapchat's Stock Sinks After Rihanna Denounces Domestic Violence Ad - techman9
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/17/594593132/snapchat-s-stock-sinks-after-rihanna-denounces-domestic-violence-ad
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khazhoux
> Snap Inc's stock prices fell around 4 percent later Thursday, wiping out
> nearly $800 million from its market value, reports CNN

I don't believe that Rihanna's tweet caused $800 million worth of investors to
change their mind. In fact, it only finished 1% lower on the day.

SNAP stock is like any other: noisy.

~~~
philwelch
Stock market reporting is generally a case study in “post hoc ergo propter
hoc”.

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dasil003
Um, if you look at the stock price it's still up 17% since Feb 1st which is
before both the Kylie Jenner and Rihanna tweets. Tasteless as the ad was,
markets are driven by greed way more than social outrage. Now if this is a
trend that actually results in Snapchat becoming uncool and usage falls over
time then that would be a story, but for now this is just grasping at straws
trying to attribute stock market noise to some minor scandal with zero long-
term effect.

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Buge
>You spent money to animate something

Is this true? From the article it doesn't sound like Snapchat made the ad. It
sounds like some other company made the ad and paid Snapchat for it to be
placed on Snapchat.

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Mononokay
It's highly doubtful they did, but it's how the person who took offense in
this situation exclaimed it happened, so that's how it will get coverage of.

Of course, if there's evidence Snapchat personally animates every ad on their
platform, I'd love to see it.

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techman9
The ad in question was of course totally tasteless and tone-deaf, but I'm
curious as to whether Snap is uniquely susceptible to price fluctuations based
on the comments of social media influencers for some reason.

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thisisit
This is really poor journalism. Just 23 days ago, we had _In One Tweet, Kylie
Jenner Wiped Out $1.3B of Snap 's Market Value_. Discussed here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16439534](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16439534)

So can we safely create a model for writing stories?

    
    
        If SNAP stock sinks
           find (social media from $celebrity)
           write $celebrity responsible for wiping $x in market value.

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tomcatfish
Just a reminder to everyone who thinks the world is simple, any platform is
sensitive to somewhat small forces from big players. The article claims that
BILLIONS were lost after a Kylie Jenner tweet. Stay cautious

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omarchowdhury
Billion dollar reductions in market capitalization doesn't mean a billion
dollars were lost (that is, transferred to some other parties from Snapchat).

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adamnemecek
Yeah no rihanna has little bearing on this. But looking for causality in stock
market behavior is fun and makes you seem smart.

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iagooar
That's what happens if all your business does is sending pictures around.
What's the intrinsic value of it?

Of course people will uninstall the app as quickly as it's uncool or they are
told to by their idols.

If Snapchat generated any kind of value / saved a lot of time, people couldn't
afford to just get rid of it.

~~~
bringtheaction
Snapchat does not just send pictures around. First of all a big part of their
value proposition is ephemeral communication in a time and age where
everything lasts for ever. Yes there are ways to work around it (using an
unofficial client that allows you to save snaps without telling the other
person you did) but still.

Additionally, Snapchat has a bunch of effects that you can add on top of
videos that people enjoy, for example the dog ears and nose and tongue.

And Snapchat has text chat and group chat.

And Snapchat has “stories” that you can post pictures and videos to and view
other peoples “stories”. A story is a feed. You can either post to a story
that your friends can see or a story that people in a group can see or to “our
story” that everyone can see.

The intristic value is communication. They are far from the only one to let
you communicate but they have a polished product and they are offering a
different sort of communication than a lot of others do.

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kumarvvr
This is just as meaningless as Snapchat having billions in valuation.

I just dont get how can SC be valued so much when all it does is move pictures
around.

~~~
darawk
Not to defend Snapchat's reputation or anything...but all Dropbox does is
'store files'. Saying snapchat just 'moves pictures' around and therefore
shouldn't be valued so highly kind of misses the point. That being said, there
are other reasons Snapchat probably shouldn't be valued so highly.

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dokem
Dropbox's value is equally dubious.

~~~
geezerjay
> Dropbox's value is equally dubious.

That's a very short-sighted value. Even if you don't believe that there is no
value in providing a very convenient and easy-to-use file hosting and file-
sharing service that even supports collaboration, just having access to so
much personal information is already quite valuable.

And people actually pay for this, to the point that Dropbox is profitable as
it is.

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dokem
People don't really care about pop celebrities, they might as well be fiction
characters. If I were to make the same, rather tame, would-you-rather joke
with a group of friends does that mean I 'make light' of domestic violence? Is
it not possible to make a joke that ignores the subtleties and nature of a
complex subject for the sake of a cheap laugh? People know where the line is,
this isn't it, and no one cares when multi-millionaires with nothing in common
with anybody hit each other. The world continues to turn...

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bshepard
It seems that many people do care about celebrities, and that if you want to
understand the world, understanding celebrity's function is part of that. A
useful place to start thinking about why celebrity matters is Max Weber's
conception of charismatic authority.

