
Snap Revenue Surges 72% on User Growth, Advertising Gains - chollida1
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-06/snap-revenue-surges-72-on-user-growth-advertising-gains
======
aphextron
I absolutely hate Facebook, but I think Snap is really getting 'social media'
right. There's no political nonsense or advertising being shoved down my
throat, just endless cat videos and memes from my friends the way it should
be. When my friends post something, it's guaranteed I will see it. There are
options for group chat and 'forum' style communication, but the core
experience is intimate and private. They're doing all the right things IMO
(for now).

~~~
GuiA
This fundamental property of _" show me only things from people I explicitly
added, and show me everything they post (ideally in reverse chronological
order)"_ is what many (myself included) seem to want from social media.

Sadly, it seems to be directly at odds with what companies want, because
social networks often start off with having that property and lose it as they
need to make the investors happy.

\- Facebook -> hasn't been true in a looooong time

\- Instagram -> hasn't been true in a few years

\- Twitter -> I think it's not true anymore? Might be if you click the right
options in your settings, but who knows for how long

~~~
dguo
Yeah, Twitter switched to an algorithmic feed in 2016 [1]. There is an option
to turn off "Show the best Tweets first," but I don't know if that will
actually cause the entire feed to be chronological.

An annoying thing about Twitter that I experienced recently is I started
getting notifications for "top Tweets." I had to tell Twitter multiple times
that I didn't want them before they stopped (there was no option to put an
immediate stop to them).

[1]:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/technology/personaltech/p...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/technology/personaltech/putting-
your-twitter-feed-back-in-chronological-order.html)

~~~
deepGem
The other annoying new feature in Twitter is the notifications for missed
tweets or summaries. I mean, there is a reason I've missed those tweets. I
don't want to be taken into the past. If I need to, I'll scroll a hundred
times and visit the past. Please show me the latest tweets on my page without
any notifications or other distractions, preferably sorted by the importance
of people I follow.

Importance = function (frequency of me retweeting or liking this person's
tweets, duration of follow)

~~~
jaymzcampbell
To add a voice for the other side of it - I've found those quite useful. I
follow people all over the world and live in London. When I have a look at
twitter in the morning I actually like that it'll show me (some) tweets from
people I follow in the US or Asia that I would've easily missed. I can't say
for sure but it _seems_ to prioritise them in some way based on my previous
interactions or how many times the tweet in question was interacted with
overnight.

~~~
deepGem
Perspectives :). I don't like this feature for exactly the same reason. I wake
up in the morning and there is a deluge of notifications since most of the
people I follow are in the opposite timezone.

------
spuiszis
Alternative headline: SNAP somehow surges 22% in after-hours trading despite
reporting a $3.5BN loss and burning $819MM in cash.

While revenue and user growth are both positive signs, there are still plenty
of red flags. SNAP's hefty valuation is based on much higher growth rates and
a faster route to profitability that still has yet to be seen.

[1] [https://investor.snap.com/~/media/Files/S/Snap-IR/reports-
an...](https://investor.snap.com/~/media/Files/S/Snap-IR/reports-and-
presentations/q4-17-earnings-slides.pdf)

Edit: grammar

~~~
manderson2080
$1.99BN was accrued over previous years from stock-based compensation. This is
very standard for companies in the year they IPO.

------
verall
As a member of 18~23yo age group ("young person"), I would say snaps the only
social media I enjoy using besides HN/reddit.

Most young people I know use Facebook for groups (local like a school or
city), events , and chat. IMO Facebook is shooting all of these feet off with
the algorithmic newsfeed and spinning off messenger.

Snap however is used constantly to keep up with peers. Haven't met a single
person that uses instagram's stories, even though its usage numbers tell
another story.

It really might just be my age/location/privlege bubble, but it consistently
baffles me that Facebook keeps growing at such a faster speed than snap.

I asked my younger siblings and none of them nor their friends have facebooks,
besides the one in college. They all have snap and insta, and spend ~2X time
on snap than insta. Most text communication is snap or SMS.

~~~
SubNoize
How do they communicate when placed Infront of a computer? I see the appeal of
snap with the younger crowd but the fact that it lives in a phone seems like a
major con, sure it's easily fixed by allowing browser access. As someone who
grew up on MSN & ICQ I couldn't imagine having to stop what I'm doing to pick
up my phone every time I want to message someone.

~~~
stochastic_monk
I know a lot of kids in their 20s who like Discord.

Slack is much better, but Discord sunk its teeth into the gaming community and
it spread.

~~~
verall
IMO discord is way better.

Pretty interface, easy to use, voice is pretty low latency (although I miss my
mumble server), and it uses ~80mb of ram to sit in like 5 groups, which while
not fantastic blows "rather open it in chrome" slack out of the water.

New signal desktop instantly uses 200mb and has to "loading messages" for 3s
every single startup :(

~~~
stochastic_monk
It's not buggy for you? The tab on the left is always glitching out on me, and
things just simply don't work like they should, whether I'm using Firefox or
Chrome. It incorrectly says "<so and so> is typing..." when the person is
typing in a different subchat.

On the whole, for a product proudly marketing itself as a Slack replacement,
it does a terrible job actually providing the same functionality.

------
Ros2
Snapchat is the only social media that actually celebrates the impermanence
and general boringness of everyday life.

Instagram and Facebook may have stories but the site is heavily predicated on
pride/narcissism arms race with your "friends".

Even your biggest narcissist can only "win" for 24 hours on Snapchat and from
what I can see they'll generally tap out of keeping up any facades to try and
make others jealous about how (seemingly) great their life is within 4-5 weeks
of using it and then join others in appreciating the little things that make
life worth living.

Your own personal values and mileage may vary, but they've hit a niche with
me.

~~~
adjkant
I think that "niche" is what you share with most people under 19 or so as of
today.

People are quick to write off Snapchat's popularity with young users as it
being the hot new toy they will tire with, but I think it's a lot deeper than
that. They see the mistakes of millennials and older with social media and
want nothing to do with it (and are thus nowhere to be found on Facebook, yet
still on Instagram because it hasn't suffered the same problems yet). Snapchat
avoids a lot of those pitfalls, though of course not without other problems. I
think so long as that impermanence is the focus, and they allow for
easy/simple communication between close friends (I'm worried about the non-
chronological part for this exact reason), they will be a big part of the
future of social media.

Facebook and the apps it owns have all tried towards that, but if the core is
permanence (the classic profile, posts, walls, likes, comments), they will
always be fighting a rising tide. Adding stories on top of that doesn't change
the core use of the app.

~~~
ramzyo
>> They see the mistakes of millennials and older with social media and want
nothing to do with it (and are thus nowhere to be found on Facebook, yet still
on Instagram because it hasn't suffered the same problems yet)

I’d be interested to see data to support this assertion.

~~~
adjkant
It's hard data to get because people still have Facebook accounts, they just
don't post on them. In order to get that data, Facebook would have to release
it by choice, and good luck with that one.

Do an experiment though. Look at all your friends around 17-18 (hard if you're
older to get a good sample size, but find someone who has friends that age if
possible). Now scroll through their walls and see when you hit 2016. I bet
it's pretty quick in 75%+ cases.

I just did it on the few I have (siblings of college friends). One took 4
posts to get to 2015. Two of those were blocks of happy birthday posts grouped
together. I know all of those people are very active on Instagram though.

Now if you can, look at people ages 23-25 or so. See how much more they post.

This is of course only data you can essentially get from being young and
having access to friends in both ranges. But I see it time and time again.

------
lev99
Snap users and advertisers have responded very positively to the clear
division between user generated content and advertising. If you are not a Snap
user, or if you haven't used it in awhile, I encourage you to check it out.

Snap advertisers are mostly lifestyle brands that want to engage with their
users in a new way. Tacobell isn't advertising on Snap, but Popular Mechanics
is. When a user clicks on Popular Mechanics they have confidence it's because
a user wants to engage with them, and Popular Mechanics hopes this closer
relationship has benefits outside of the Snapchat app. A user choosing to give
you their attention is a _very_ valuable thing. Most other social media
advertisements are missing this part.

~~~
nradov
Why would I want to "engage" with "lifestyle brands"? Am I missing something
here? What does that even mean?

~~~
Dan_Nguyen
>What does that even mean?

My guess is it's just another way of saying people like consuming media from
companies that are relevant to their interests.

I personally find Snap's advertising to be nice. It's nice to have it separate
from what my friends upload like what others have said. I've also found that
what Snap puts out is _way_ more enjoyable to look at than Facebook's
advertisements.

Take sports for example. I'm a huge NFL, NBA, and MLB fan. Facebook's sports-
oriented ads are usually limited to the game score which I don't need to look
at because the game is already on my TV. Snap, on the other hand, puts up a
nice collection of Snapchat videos from other people. I can get a pre-game
locker room video from the players and I can get a fan's view of the game-
winning touchdown in the same collection. Both are things you wouldn't see on
a typical game broadcast. I'm fully aware that both are advertisements, but
one is significantly more relevant and more enjoyable for me to consume than
the other.

------
pkamb
The "Publisher" stories I see on Snapchat are invariably stories about various
Kardashian/Jenner family members or generic buzzfeed-esque millennial-targeted
clickbait.

These seem _very_ poorly targeted towards me. Does everyone see only this? Are
there ways to get into different/better advertising buckets? Even something
like "GQ" would be far better than the "People" content I'm currently seeing.

On Instagram the ads are targeted at things I would actually click through and
buy -- lots of ads for shoes, bags, clothing, kickstarter-like items, etc.

I assume that's via the hashtags and people I follow on Instagram: cars,
travel, architecture, etc. + perhaps via some creepy FaceBook magic.

Without hashtags, how does Snapchat figure out what "Publishers" I'd want to
see?

~~~
adjkant
You can tell them to ignore some publishers and subscribe to others. My
Snapchat subscriptions are NYT, Wired, WaPo, and a few others. I have blocked
People and Daily Mail.

Hold down on a publisher story to get options.

~~~
pkamb
In the last 24 hours I've gotten the newly designed app, and it is much more
prominent now on how to subscribe/block publishers. Did subscriptions even
exist in the previous app?

~~~
adjkant
Yeah they did - I still don't have the new update and have that model. Like
most of Snapchat of old, it's all hidden features. While I'm worried about the
new update, there are definitely some advantages. I love the separation
concept but just hope they roll back to the non-chronological and maybe the
story/message mix.

------
bigtones
A loss of $3.45 Billion for the year - that is absolutely mind blowing. That
is a net loss of USD $393,000 per hour for every hour of 2017.

~~~
CobrastanJorji
Put another way, this is roughly the cost of walking through a town at 0.1
MPH, destroying every house you come across.

~~~
nerfhammer
you don't destroy the house, you transfer it from investors to employees,
largely executives.

reason is, the "loss" isn't cash outflow, it's from compensation by creating
stock, which investors pay for via dilution.

~~~
CobrastanJorji
I'm not suggesting the wealth actually is being destroyed in this case. It's a
mental heuristic for comprehending large amounts.

A billion dollars isn't an amount of wealth that has any real meaning to my
brain compared to things that happen in my life. On the other hand, I have a
very real and personal understanding of about how much a house is worth. From
that, it's reasonable to get a gut understanding of an amount of cost by
imagining houses being destroyed at a certain pace.

------
mmanfrin
The cynic in me feels this has more to do with the quarterly imperative to
improve numbers showing that they've figured out how to start monetizing
rather than an indication of the health of the company. The number of friends
I see using Snapchat have dwindled mightily, although I admit I'm not quite
the target audience (being a 29 year old male.

------
sorenjan
I don't use it myself, but all day I've heard nothing but complaints over the
new version that apparently came out today.

~~~
nv-vn
I honestly expect them to roll it back. I've used it for a few weeks on the
beta, and it's turned me away from certain features because they're so
separated and disjoint.

------
danschumann
I thought Snap was not doing so well. I watch Gary Vaynerchuck and it seems
like every guest he has all say the same thing, "Snap used to be great for me,
now no1 is there".

~~~
nostromo
Snap does suck for brands and "internet personalities."

But that's exactly why it works so well for small groups and close friends.

~~~
wil421
Small groups and close friends was what Facebook was in the past. I remember
joining when you had to have a .edu address.

------
megaman22
Snapchat has advertising? I'll admit, I'm a neophyte and basically just use it
for texting a handful of people that for whatever reason appear to be allergic
to good old SMS, but I've never seen any of it. I'm not sure where I'd go in
the app to see it.

I suppose it's a good thing; they're not wasting any of those views on people
like me...

------
traviswingo
Whatever happened to businesses making money?

~~~
toephu2
That's so 1990s

------
iaml
I wish any of my friends would use snapchat, I would be so happy! Instead they
use instagram stories, but I can't open instagram without being bombarded by
tons of spam and irrelevant ads anymore, I just can't use it.

------
whymsicalburito
I've been trying to get into snapchat for the past 2 months and I still just
don't see the appeal. Every interaction I've had with someone on the platform
could have just as easily happened in any other messenger platform (pick one
of the 1000s out there). I'm only 29, but I feel way too old to be using
snapchat. Maybe I'm missing something, but I see myself deleting the app this
year.

------
chatmasta
I called this when Snap introduced self serve ads. Since then I've been seeing
a bunch of insurance/debt ads that are obviously affiliate campaigns.

Like it or not, this is how FB bootstrapped their ads business (acai berry
anyone?), and Snap is smart to capture the long tail of self-serve
advertisers.

------
inamberclad
My two complaints with Snapchat are that the app itself is somewhat bloated.
In addition, I've turned off personalized ads and as far as I can tell,
they're respecting it since all the ads are just lowest-common-denominator
drivel

------
heedlessly2
i think people who argue "Snapchat will never be as big as Facebook" are just
wasting their time. Who cares? Social experience feels more engaging. FB is
better for "acquaintanceships", but Snapchat is better for friendships.

------
KaoruAoiShiho
Awww yeah, go snap. Right again.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15677666](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15677666)

~~~
bennesvig
> The latest conference call was very enlightening in that it showed me how
> much snapchat was doing wrong and what they can do to fix it.

Just curious, what did you think they were doing wrong and needed to fix?

