
Frustrated Snap Social Influencers Leaving for Rival Platforms - JumpCrisscross
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/frustrated-snap-social-influencers-leaving-for-rival-platfor?utm_term=.ntrdmZmzxO#.jrRwvZv56y
======
ryandrake
> At the time Platco had amassed a sizable audience of followers — large
> enough that he was preparing to leave his day job to create content for
> Snapchat full-time.

This is mind-boggling and scary. I simply can't understand how "social
influencer" is a career. This person gets paid a full-time equivalent salary
for... mentioning products to a bunch of Snapchat accounts following him
because... he has a lot of followers, which is because... ??? Am I just having
a senior moment here? What am I missing? Why does anyone care what this random
guy says and why do companies think having this person shill their products
has any marketing value? This reminds me of famous people who are famous
simply for being famous. Has everyone just gone nuts?

~~~
chasing
500,000 followers puts his viewership on par with, say, "Morning Joe" with Joe
Scarborough Mika Brzezinski. (Rough numbers, here.)

A little research. Poking around I see "Family Guy" has been pulling, say,
$250k for a 30 second spot. They've got, say, five times "Morning Joe's"
ratings. So let's say "MJ" gets $50k/spot to access (influence) their 500k
viewers. Super rough numbers, to reiterate, but I bet it's of this scale given
what the hosts make.

So.

$80k doesn't seem that out-of-line to market directly towards a very narrowly
defined demographic of that size. If you can accumulate such an audience, it's
probably reasonable to compare your impact to that of a moderately popular TV
show. And if you can make that impact with basically zero overhead... Well.
Seems reasonable that you'd be raking in some cash.

~~~
eridius
I don't think you can directly compare followers like that, though. This guy
may have 500,000 followers, but that doesn't mean they're actually viewing
everything he posts. Whereas viewership of TV shows is attempting to measure
how many people actually watched that show.

~~~
csydas
I'm not sure the it's all that different though really, since I don't think it
measures "watched" as much as "had the show on as noted by the set box".
Unless the tech has changed, I think it just is hardware that determines what
was on the TV and when; it's not actively checking to see if people are
watching.

Just having the TV on doesn't really mean that the people are watching, paying
attention, or even in the same room. (for an example, my folks insist they
can't fall asleep unless the TV is on in the background, with my mother and
aunt joking that the Law and Order theme song is a lullaby for them). That
certainly would be more in line with what the Snapchat audience is like.

Advertisers are well aware of this and seem pretty contented with that fact,
and have devised some real-world tactics to better get their audience's
attention.

~~~
bleachedsleet
Also worth noting that any view on Snapchat is indicative of active engagement
because of the ephemeral nature of it (even the stories to an extent are a
view it once experience). All my peers (younger age brackets) always use
Snapchat when they want to guarantee a response from their friends because it
forces immediate interaction. Despite its urgent nature, I've found it
actually forces more thoughtful responses because people have to make time to
actually view and immediately reply. Also, anyone they follow on their stories
is usually viewed at some point. Browsing your Snapchat story updates is akin
to a modern form of scrolling through the news but with guaranteed viewership.

------
abalone
I wonder if Snap's strategy here was built around a false dichotomy.

As noted in the article, Snap's expressed strategy is to focus on your closest
friends, not "influencers". But their user growth leveled off when Instagram
cloned them. I noticed a swift migration _even among my friends_ from Snapchat
to Instagram. These were experienced Snapchat users, and they migrated mostly
to Instagram because they reach more friends there. They are not
"influencers", but they do care about reaching all their friends with their
stories, and Instagram has a larger network. It seems to me a lot of regular
people do actually care about reaching a few hundred "friends" with their
stories, not just their closest.

------
jondubois
These online celebrities are manipulative, greedy, two-faced, non-
contributing, capitalist parasites. I wouldn't trust anything that comes out
of their mouths.

This guy is either jealous or upset that the Snapchat founders didn't pay him
off to keep quiet in the lead-up to their IPO.

~~~
exolymph
> capitalist parasites

Did you forget where you are? This forum is hosted by a VC firm.

~~~
Neliquat
A 'good' capitolist creates value, rather than syphoning it from the current
supply.

------
PMan74
> He figured a casual visit to Snap HQ, while perhaps unexpected, wasn’t
> untoward given his profile on the platform.

I'd love to know what was going through his head. "Sure, they're probably all
just sitting around killing time, they'd love an unexpected visit in the
middle of their work day"

------
christianmunoz
I don't disagree that influencers exist on pretty much all large social
networks nowadays, and that some people make a living off of this. I've seen
it firsthand with people I know who do this, and it's not as far-fetched as
some of the other commenters here suggest. But I'd like to point out a few
things:

\- As mentioned in the article, I believe Snapchat is trying to differentiate
itself from other social networks that have these almost spam like influencers
who constantly plug the companies that pay them. I see this as a good move on
Snapchat's part. For the influencers themselves: over time people start to
notice that many of your posts are simply plugs, and you become less
interesting.

\- I'm sure Snapchat would much rather see that money (the money being paid to
these influencers for product placement) go to them in the form of real
advertisements, rather than to the influencers. By supporting them with
additional features/tools to measure engagement and connect with followers,
they would essentially be justifying this activity.

\- As someone who uses Snapchat daily, and knowing hundreds of others who do
as well (I'm a college student), I don't believe that influencers are as big
or important on Snapchat as they are on other social networks. The majority of
content people come to Snapchat to see are created by their friends.
Hypothetically, if all of the influencers disappeared off of Snapchat, I don't
think it would have very much of an impact on Snapchat's users.

\- Influencers primarily only use Stories on Snapchat to entertain their
followers, which is just one part of Snapchat. There are still 1:1 and group
chat Snaps that are sent amongst friends. Influencers by a large majority
don't use the latter two features to interact with their followers. 1:1 and
group chat Snaps between friends are still very heavily used features of
Snapchat.

\- As another commenter mentioned, Snapchat does not have a discover/explore
section like Instagram and other social networks do. This makes it harder for
influencers to gain new followers on Snapchat who don't know them already.
Because of this, I don't see Snapchat as being the right place for influencers
to start out with.

I think this article overestimates the importance of influencers on Snapchat.
Yes, what is said in the article could very well be true, that influencers are
upset that Snapchat isn't giving them the time of day. But I don't see this as
a bad thing, or as something that is going to have any impact on Snapchat as a
whole. The suggestion that the author makes about this possibly being
problematic for Snapchat as it was for Vine is simply not the case. Vine was
the perfect example of over-reliance on influencers and their content to keep
Vine alive. Just my two cents.

------
Apocryphon
Justin Kan has been a big booster of Snapchat, and is a well-followed
influencer there. Surprised that HN is so surprised at the success of Snap,
given that one of their own has been on it for a very long time.

~~~
et-al
Has he posted anything good as of late? I followed him 'cause someone
mentioned Justin Kan was dropping knowledge on Snapchat, but his snaps were
just "typical" rich guy stuff so I stopped.

~~~
justin
Classic lazy rich guy

------
dvt
Article seems like clickbait.

Plus, Snapchat has never been about "creators" anyway (there's no discovery,
for one), it's about your close circle of friends. Sure it's fun following
like Dj Khaled or something, but most snap views and snap sends are from
people to their friends.

~~~
cblock811
Facebook wasn't about ads but grew into that because it was a revenue source.
I guess this is the direction Snapchat is going in.

~~~
gscott
And Facebook bans people from having paid product placements. This guy should
be careful what he wishes for. There are all sorts of people who made their
living making postings on Facebook who are now kicked off.

------
blueline
Yeah it sounds like you're having a senior moment; this person is an
entertainer. Sorry that what constitutes entertainment for people outside your
demographic isn't up to your standard.

~~~
dang
Totally out of line and if you attack a fellow user like this again we will
ban you.

Also... 'senior moment'? Part of HN's culture is that we respect our seniors.
That's important—I know from my own experience how rare it is to find good
mentorship and how deeply we need it. HN goes some measure toward filling this
gap—just to a small extent, but we'd like to see that grow. So that's
something you're particularly not allowed to fuck with.

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13779105](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13779105)
and marked it off-topic.

------
funkyy
Sorry, but Buzzfeed as a source on HN? I understand all sides should be heard,
but BF is one of the least trusted main sources of information.

~~~
eridius
Your comment might have been correct a few years ago, but these days BuzzFeed
News is actually a source of excellent journalism. Many of the best news
articles I've read in the past few months came from BuzzFeed News.

~~~
mpclark
Up to a point. They've added some great news coverage, but they still also do
the rubbish they always did. There are effectively two Buzzfeeds, not a single
reformed entity that is now a credible source.

~~~
eridius
There is in fact 2 BuzzFeeds. The clickbait stuff is under the banner of
BuzzFeed. The news articles are under the banner of BuzzFeed News. And the
former pays for the latter, so I find it hard to fault them for it.

------
Animats
"With approximately 500,000 Snapchat followers, he now works regularly with
brands who pay him as much as $80,000 for a series of posts." That's a
spammer.

Anyway, Snapchat just got Donald Trump.[1] They don't need this guy.

[1] [http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/trump-snapchat-
pres...](http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/trump-snapchat-president-s-
expanded-social-media-presence-offers-pitfalls-n712946)

~~~
Lazare
It's the exact opposite of spam. What's unsolicited about content you've
explicitly subscribed to see? Do you think inline adwords style ads on a
website are "spam"?

~~~
na85
>Do you think inline adwords style ads on a website are "spam"?

I do. I presumably came to read the article, not the injected ads you paid to
put in front of me.

~~~
Lazare
So by that logic television ads are also spam? After all, you came to watch
the show.

Your objection to advertising is fine, but you do know that's not a definition
of the word "spam" anyone else is using, right?

