
How Snapchat Built a Business by Confusing Olds - peterkrieg
http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-how-snapchat-built-a-business/
======
yomly
For the non-believers of Snapchat, here is where I think its value lies:

For the past 50 years brand strategy has largely been (fairly) well
characterised. Conventional wisdom in the industry did well enough for brands
like McDonald's and Coca Cola to expand across the world and capture
generations of customers. This is in part due to an incremental pace of
innovation in how customers have consumed media in this time period.

Then came along the internet and a bringing a huge stepwise change, driving
not only unprecedented levels of fragmentation/segmentation/individualisation
of users but also changing how we interact with and consume media.

The generation of "millennials" and "digital natives" are people who now spend
more time on the internet than in front of a TV.

Facebook, with their 1Bn+ daily active users who are known to spend nearly 18
hours a week on the Facebook mobile app, saw the value in Snapchat - younger
users don't have a Facebook account. It's uncool, it's creepy with its privacy
policies. Snapchat has extremely strong market share on viewership for a
generation of users that are arguably the most impressionable/valuable. This
same generation don't really watch TV. Considering individual brands would
spend hundreds of millions on TV, if Snapchat can capture even a fraction of
this media budget, they'll be hugely profitable.

NB I chose McDonald's and Coke as brands as they are two good examples of
previously invincible global brands that are now showing significant decline.
They also had huge media budgets. For the purposes of my argument, I've chosen
to ignore other market trends such as growing health awareness but my point
still stands.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Is there any real evidence that these kids don't watch any tv and only do
snapchat and watch makeup gurus on YouTube? I know it's fun to say but I mean
what about reality? ....

~~~
dboreham
Evidence in our house, yes. The TV delivery industry shot their feet off in
this area because they have a pricing model where they want to charge per
"screen" (we use Echostar, but I believe the other providers have similar
pricing). They also insist (or did until yesterday) that the data gets to the
screen by coax. My two kids have tv screens in their bedrooms but I was not
interested in paying an extra fee to have the signal delivered to them, nor
was I keen to crawl around under the floor pulling coax (they have perfectly
fine GigE connections already). They could in theory watch TV on a screen in
the family room but they'd need to fight someone else for control of the set
top box (and get out of bed). The result is they spend all day watching
YouTube and Snapchatting on their phones. The TVs are only used for Netflix.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
OK, but you know what they say about anecdotes, right? I'm sure there are many
people on HN that have never watched a show in their entire life; there is an
Onion article about "Area Man Constantly Telling People He doesn't Own a TV"
[1]. Also, there is a group of people in America I understand called the
Amish. That's fine but I'm not sure how to generalize from that .... My
response is to this kind of often repeated idea that I think lacks a lot of
merit or evidence in reality. For that view to be true, there better be a
statistically insignificant number of kids that have ever seen any of these
shows or any of their associated advertisments because they are too busy with
Snapchat.

One thing I am aware of is that kids have a lot of free time and they do a lot
of different things, is what I understand.

1\. [http://www.theonion.com/article/area-man-constantly-
mentioni...](http://www.theonion.com/article/area-man-constantly-mentioning-
he-doesnt-own-a-tel-429)

------
dec0dedab0de
The best part about snapchat, vs sms/mms is when someone doesn't respond it
just goes away. So when you message each other later it's not hanging there as
a reminder building silent resentments.

~~~
xufi
"Hey did you see my.........hey where did you go?"

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gcb0
case in point: everyone here comparing IM with TV or Facebook. at least say
telephone in you analogy.

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macscam
what is 'olds'? old people? Why would any business grow by confusing them?

~~~
kmfrk
"Olds" is a coy term by "millennials" who wanted the older generations who
invented and keep using the term to get a taste of their own medicine.

As far as keeping out "olds", look at what Tinder did by demanding a premium
from 30+ users: [http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/tinder-charging-
people-30-t...](http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/tinder-charging-
people-30-tinder/story?id=29335809).

~~~
mgiannopoulos
I don't think Tinder wants to keep out 30-year olds. In fact they want to
monetise them as they know they have more available income and are more
willing to spend it in a dating service.

~~~
vuivugvuov
And perhaps most hilariously, there's almost no actual way to prevent people
from lying about their age on the internet.

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hellbanner
Does anyone have a link where one of the Snapchat founder admits they created
the app to send photos of their penises to college girls?

~~~
gcb0
no link. but it was when his Stanford frat house. same place where he start
the app with the guy that coded the thing but then got outed, so probably a
good indication of who leaked.

~~~
hellbanner
Thanks. I bet ^parent downvoted because it sounds like slander but I did read
this on a few articles.. linked from HN IIRC.

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/28/confirmed-snapchats-evan-
sp...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/28/confirmed-snapchats-evan-spiegel-is-
kind-of-an-ass/)

Let's not forget that human sexuality plays a core component in business
motivations and the environment in which this XX billion $ company was formed.

