
NBC’s Snapchat news show gains 29+ million viewers in its first month - janober
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/18/nbcs-snapchat-news-show-gains-29-million-viewers-in-its-first-month
======
danso
It is borderline irresponsible for a blog post to tout NBC's Snapchat
initiatives without fitting in a line about how NBC is Snapchat's biggest
(perhaps only?) major media investor, to the tune of $500M:
[https://www.recode.net/2017/3/3/14801168/snap-nbc-
investment...](https://www.recode.net/2017/3/3/14801168/snap-nbc-investment-
steve-burke-letter)

I don't mean to suggest that NBC is futzing the numbers to bolster its
investment, just that they have a massive incentive to make things look as
rosy as possible. And, on the flip side, they have an incentive to be as
innovative in the media storytelling space as possible. Other outlets have
Snapchat presences but nothing quite to this scale.

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grepthisab
This is great, and I'm not really surprised by its success. The stuff they
have on there now is just total, absolute garbage. Right now it's:

"Courtney (one of the karsidhins) is an Egyptian Goddess"

"How Much Porn is Too Much Porn"

"Is this the Big L for Drake"

I just cannot imagine caring about any of this stuff, and it uses a lot of
data to just load the previews. It's so annoying I did my first Instagram
story this week.

Good to see snapchat is putting together some content that you wouldn't see in
a tabloid magazine. I realize I probably sound like an old man, which I am
not.

~~~
wutbrodo
> "Courtney (one of the karsidhins) is an Egyptian Goddess"

Did they misspell "Kardashians", or did you? Even the kind of people who would
be interested in why a Kardashian is an Egyptian Goddess would presumably
notice the misspelling.

~~~
atomical
It doesn't matter.

~~~
wutbrodo
I know you want to signal that you're too cool to care about the Kardashians,
and I don't care about them either. But it's entirely relevant to the
conversation and the attempt to understand what kind of userbase this post
describes if NBC isn't even bothering to spell names right in their headline.

~~~
atomical
The novelty of NBC's move and the reason it's being talked about on HN is that
an old media giant is embracing Snapchat's younger demographic. Once you know
that any supporting details are largely irrelevant because they only further
describe what is already known.

------
two2two
I asked my 16 year old nephew 6 months ago how he accesses the news. His
answer: Snapchat. I followed that with anywhere else? His response was nope.

There is a lot of potential for using snapchat for news related coverage. Say
NBC creates a "become a NBC snap journalist package" available to anyone that
requests it. Included is a pin, handheld mic with "NBCx" (or some other visual
identifier), something like an AP style guidebook that is simplified, and a
concise bit a rules on what is considered news. NBC can sift through these
specific accounts, select and publish what's most relevant.

I might sign up for an account if Snap gave me a way to get hyper-local
coverage from snap journalists.

~~~
Swizec
> I asked my 16 year old nephew 6 months ago how he accesses the news. His
> answer: Snapchat.

I mean, I'm 29 and I get all my news from Twitter, Imgur, and HackerNews.
Panders to a different demographic, but is ultimately just as bad.

Most news is garbage anyway. Designed to make you anxious so you'll buy more
stuff. At least HackerNews doesn't have that motive so it's more interesting
on average.

~~~
ma2rten
In Germany (and the same applies to many other countries as well) the majority
of people watch public broadcast news every day. It's financed by tax money so
there is no profit motive and it's reasonably unbiased. I think a major reason
for the current political divide in the US is that both camps have their own
sources of information.

~~~
philipov
Just because it doesn't have private shareholders doesn't mean there's no
income motive. Executives want to maximize the money they can pay themselves
regardless of whether the company distributes dividends.

~~~
ma2rten
That's true. I actually don't know how the incentives are structured for
executives in the German broadcast but they seem to reward creating quality,
unbiased news.

If you look at the most popular newspaper in Germany which is essentially a
tabloid it's clear it's not because there is less demand for that kind of
trash in Germany.

------
raiyu
Big difference between what snapchat counts as a "view" \- just opening a
single video - and actually viewing the program, as in watching it for more
than second.

Would be interesting to see what 29MM viewers converts into number of minutes
of actually viewed content.

But hey, as a vanity metric, 29MM is impressive! =]

~~~
niftich
Snapchat is using a disingenuous metric here to count views which plays to
their advantage; an advantage they wish to exploit as long as they can before
their advertisers and content partners wisen up and start demanding a metric
that better captures whether the content was consumed to the producer's
satisfaction enough to count as an impression.

Right now, this is not as big of a concern because Snapchat's coveted
demographic composition and its curated way of working with content partners
and advertisers; this results in advertiser self-selection and attracts brand-
oriented advertisers with big budgets and less of an acute interest in
tracking ROI.

However, once those advertisers look harder at their ROI (like Procter &
Gamble [1]) or Snapchat wishes to attract the sorts of SMB advertisers its
competitor Facebook can readily attract onto FB and Instagram -- and even
struggling Twitter can court -- Snapchat will face increasing pressure to
change the way they count views. Facebook, for example, has had a 3-second
cutoff before counting a video view for a while, even as they bungled the way
they reported metrics [2]. Different platforms have differing definitions on
what counts as a view or impression [3].

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14879204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14879204)
[2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-exaggerating-view-
co...](http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-exaggerating-view-count-didnt-
affect-advertiser-bills-2016-9) [3] [http://marketingland.com/whats-a-video-
view-on-facebook-only...](http://marketingland.com/whats-a-video-view-on-
facebook-only-3-seconds-vs-30-at-youtube-128311)

~~~
wolco
It is tough to compare them. Facebook videos automatically play so that 3
second level isn't completely real either.

~~~
paulie_a
Even when you explicitly disable auto play it gets turned back on for some odd
reason.

~~~
rhizome
The "sort by > most recent" resetter was foreshadowing.

------
dgfgfdagasdfgfa
Is any of the news content on snapchat worth watching? Scrolling through their
_entire offering_ seems to offer less information than a casual glance at the
front page of a newspaper.

------
shostack
Senior digital media guy here. If I were to ask some pointed questions around
these claims they might be along the lines of...

\- What is the distribution of view durations? Given how Snap counts a view
I'd be shocked if more than a small percentage were longer than a second or
two.

\- How many of these views were paid to increase reach (either directly or via
some deal given their investment in Snap)? Most "successful" online videos
like this are kicked off with sizeable spend to claim large view counts, get a
spike for popularity (which in some platforms can help get organic views)

\- What so subsequent views and view duration cohorts look like? I'd be
shocked if there wasn't steep drop off.

\- What is the distribution of account age for these viewers? This could flag
less sophisticated fake account creation if there was any padding going on.

------
rmason
What amazed me from those numbers is that Lester Holt who does the evening
news for NBC only gets around 9 million viewers.

[http://thehill.com/homenews/media/326152-nbcs-lester-holt-
to...](http://thehill.com/homenews/media/326152-nbcs-lester-holt-tops-evening-
news-ratings)

So how long before Mark Zuckerburg says to Kevin Systrom, call CBS or ABC and
then make a copy of this service?

~~~
VLM
Holt's numbers are for 30 minute views of roughly five minutes of news, if
there's enough going on not to require filler, ten minutes of complimentary
copy, political preaching to the choir, and video news releases, and finally
fifteen minutes of advertising. The snapchat thing is for starting 30 second
videos. They're providing a similar amount of news content after all the
corrections are applied.

Also all social media services have purchased content and purchased clicks
available. Its impossible to estimate how many of the 29 million are bots or
purchased traffic.

Combined, Holt has a larger reach, at least for now.

------
seasonalgrit
I'm confused -- i thought Snapchat was for sending pictures that get auto-
deleted. I'm honestly not sure how to even keep up with this stuff anymore,
other than installing everything and using it, which i don't have the time or
inclination for.

------
nnd
So it looks like those kinds of news is not tailored to the user, right?

What's interesting is how beneficial is the news curated by an ML algorithm.
If we optimize the content presented to the user by the metric of his
engagement, that a slippery slope, as we know that the majority of people
would unconsciously click on click-bait articles which might not be the most
interesting, relevant or beneficial for them. Moreover, there is a risk of
opinion bias, as we clearly seen with Facebook during the recent US
presidential campaign.

Which in turn raises the question: "Is consuming news (even if tailored to
your preferences) is the best way to have a well-rounded view of the world"?

------
yeukhon
So how long is each segment? 10 seconds? That's not news.

~~~
personlurking
I'm not familiar with Snap but I recently downloaded Instagram for the first
time and, despite 99% of the content being "look at how cool I am!", I did
find a regional news station (from Spain) that only posts 30 second clips of
local news. It's akin to Great Big Story on YT, in the way that it gives you
just enough info to see if you're interested (at which point you can look up
more about whatever it is online).

I'd love to find more IG accounts like this but I'm not sure news clips via IG
is actually a thing.

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mzzter
"But that’s not necessarily a fair comparison, given that Snapchat counts a
view as soon as a video opens."

Take the 29 million view count with a grain of salt.

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pducks32
I don’t know if it’s something in recent events (I presume not) but it’s
disappointing HN can’t have a conversation around popular culture topic
without descending into calling part of the population “vapid” or whatever.
Can’t we just accept people like different things. I like ruby. Maybe you
don’t.

------
Sindrome
I pretty much exclusively followed the last presidential election through
Snapchat channels.

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rdxm
oh great, yet another avenue for younger generations to bleed more of their IQ
(and by extension wealth) off.

at some point this shit-show is going to come home to roost.... (wait...that's
happening now multi-generationally with trump)....

seriously, after the multi-decade debacle of the 24 hour conflict channels
(CNN/MSNBC/FOX) one would think we'd learned our lesson...

apparently not.....

~~~
quickthrower2
The film Idiocracy is a prediction not satire.

~~~
JetSpiegel
It's just eugenics propaganda, although you can make the case for that
interpretation to be unintended.

Good comedians never let facts or good taste get in the way of good jokes, and
Idiocracy has some interesting observations, but the framing device is
repugnant.

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retox
Seems like a lot of news stories already cite fb or Twitter posts anyway, so
it's a natural progression.

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xirdstl
Is this like "MTV News" ?

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perseusprime11
Too good to be true.

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notadoc
Does anyone still use Snapchat? Isn't it all teenagers?

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themark
Amazed at this hacker news at the top of the charts.

