
Snapchat CEO’s leaked memo on survival - cpeterso
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/04/chat-not-snap/
======
mindgam3
Give credit where credit is due. Spiegel is digging deep, showing humility,
and asking the right questions after Snap has been flailing for a long time.
The crux of the issue is that they haven't launched anything fundamentally
innovative and game-changing since the original Snapchat, which went insanely
viral in the teen demographic.

In this sense they are following a similar path as Bebo, where I worked before
they were acquired by AOL. Launch viral product to teens, blow up huge, score
huge business deals, and then growth stagnates because it turns out the
original vision only encompassed a product, not an entire platform. Bebo ended
up selling to AOL right before it became clear the entire business model was
failing thanks to Facebook. I saw a comment below about 2019 being the year
that Snap is acquired. I could very much see that happening.

The only thing that would turn things around is if Spiegel can pull another
rabbit out of his hat and launch a category-defining product somewhere.
Augmented Reality could be where they do it. They did fail miserably with
Spectacles, their first take on smartglasses, but again, give credit to them
for having the balls to invest in hardware and ship a product. That said, the
fact that they shipped a v2 of Spectacles that didn't fix any of the core
problems with the original isn't a good sign.

Still, augmented reality is going to be the future of computing when it merges
with consumer wearables. It's early days in this market. Every Big Tech
company is racing to launch the iPhone of smartglasses. Snap has managed to be
the first to launch consumer glasses with a camera. If they can pull their
sh*t together and ship something that is actually useful and doesn't look
ridiculous, they could still emerge as a dominant player.

~~~
joering2
Snap was first? We forgetting Google Glasses I guess.

Google tried but clearly market maturity is not there yet. Doubt it will be
2019. We need to squeeze more into chips before a regular-size glasses will be
available with AR built in.

Also personally I doubt it will be iPhone of AR. Too many companies are
working on it and probably will come up to light at the similar time. It will
be more like cruise control that so many car makers basically invented at the
same time.

~~~
mindgam3
Correction: first to put camera on glasses with enough fashion sense not to
spawn a brand new word to describe just how much their owners looked like Borg
assholes. I’m referring of course to “glasshole.”

All signs point to Apple launching their glasses in 2019 or maybe 2020 if they
slip. I don’t have insider info at Apple but if you look at the rate they are
hoovering up AR companies it’s clear they’re prepping for a big move. If they
don’t launch by 2019 somebody else will steal their thunder with the first
consumer smartglasses that don’t totally suck, most likely a fast moving
startup with a killer niche product.

~~~
code_duck
Glasshole has been used for a long time to describe a personal style of
egotistical glass artists. It had a new meaning added.

------
thosakwe
I used to be a heavy user of Snapchat, and fall into its dominant demographic
- young* (edit, had forgotten this word) users.

I remember buying stock in the company, and the same week, their big update
rolling out, and quite literally burying my friends and their stories
underneath the "overcrowded pile of clickbait" mentioned in the article. That,
I believe, is where Snap really went wrong, and what drove 3 million users
away from its platform.

When you combine Instagram's own story implementation with the fact that
Snap's focus seems to be mainly on Discover from this point, it seems unlikely
to me that they'll ever regain the interest of people who abandoned it back in
February.

It will be interesting to see which changes they roll out in the months to
come, but honestly, as long as the Discover page has even less meaningful
content than a Taboola "Content you May Like" block, I can't foresee it being
a real draw in for new users.

~~~
21
I don't have many friends on Snapchat, but I follow a lot of celebrities.

Literally the same week, 90% of them stopped posting, and it never recovered.
Now it's a ghost town.

People who followed friends got hit, people who follow celebrities got hit, I
just don't get it what was on their mind.

~~~
jboy55
I would have to wonder how many true celebrities, people whose fame come from
outside of social media, felt the same frustrations at not being able to see
their friends feeds as other users.

------
lysp
One of the reasons they had the mass exodus of the celebrity / influencer
content makers was due to statistics.

On "Instagram Insights" you can see: Interactions of the last 7 days, profile
visits, email clicks, reach, impressions.

Also in-depth demographics by your audience as well: city/country breakdown,
age range, age range by gender, gender percentage, followers per hour and per
day.

And get similar statistics / demographics for all images and stories you post.

If you were paying someone to promote content - these help justify payments
made for content.

Compare to snap with the stat of: "I have 10k follows" and that's it.

Marketers want to know they are getting value for money, so need these to help
justify paying someone for promotions/ads.

eg. [http://musemarketinggroup.ca/wp-
content/uploads/2017/08/insi...](http://musemarketinggroup.ca/wp-
content/uploads/2017/08/insights-770x481.jpg)

~~~
krn
> Also in-depth demographics by your audience as well: city/country breakdown,
> age range, age range by gender, gender percentage [...]

Does Snapchat actually collect all this information about its users? If yes,
when it's such an unbelievable miss.

------
anilshanbhag
Lost in all this is an important distinction that Snapchat wanted to make:
they wanted to separate friends from influencers / celebrities / media. It was
a good change. Another important thing Snapchat does is it doesn't show likes
/ followers publicly - when the whole world is chasing these numbers Snapchat
has taken stance against it. The general philosophy they follow makes me think
this is short term pain and the company will do fine in the long run.

~~~
dannyw
I'd love to hear why you think that separating friends from influencers,
celebrity, or media is a good change. The last element I get somewhat, but I
don't think anyone has a conceptual issue identifying who is a fried and who
is an influencer, and being able to see stories with minimal friction was a
major draw for me.

~~~
sytelus
I follow few friends and non-friends on FB and they are very distinct
entities. The non-friends I follow are because of some common interest like a
research field or outdoor sport. I would be happy to see weekend yard work
photos from my friend but I wouldn’t care so much of that from non-friends.
The intent of why I follow these two classes is very different. However
Snapchat crowd might be different as I understand. Young folks would tend to
consider both classes as same.

------
willio58
As a college student who’s only social media comes through Snapchat, I’m glad
that they will be making changes. The redesign doesn’t make much sense and
just made things more confusing if anything. I have 12+ friends in a group
which we use to coordinate hanging out and to generally chat about things we
find interesting. I haven’t used the stories functionality in over a year. I
really think the move to focusing on chat is the way to go, even though
there’s a lot of competition there.

I started on Facebook at 12 years old when it first became popular, I’ve gone
through many platforms but dropped them all and I’ve been using only Snapchat
for over 4 years now and it seems to have the perfect level of privacy. It
also doesn’t feed as much into the whole “look at how awesome my life is
compared to yours” trap of facebookish platforms, at least the way my friends
use it.

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
Just curious (I don't use Snapchat as I'm a fair bit older then the target
demographic), why do you use it to chat rather than an actual IM? Eg Telegram
or Discord or Wire.

~~~
n767
I'm not OP but I use Snapchat a lot to chat. I like that the messages are not
saved, it feels more natural for me as in I don't have to "think" too much
about what I write, just as talking. This way it feels less staged, you can
compare it to photos on insta vs photos on snap (likes and permanent vs none
of that). With text it's obviously to a lesser extend but still. No one can go
through years of messages and see what i said back then.

------
A7med
The discover shit what made me delete Snapchat, keeps throwing annoying people
at my face every time I open the app, why? it was a fun way to chat with
friends and share short videos but no let fill it with booty shaking and nasty
stuff and force you to watch it

------
shanghaiaway
I read the whole memo, or tried to. Ridiculous. It means nothing at all. One
OKR is "spread positivity". What does that even mean? How is it measurable?
[https://cheddar.com/videos/snap-ceo-evan-spiegel-company-
mem...](https://cheddar.com/videos/snap-ceo-evan-spiegel-company-memo-
on-2019-strategic-goals-and-profitability)

~~~
PhoenixReborn
Indeed. Looking at their OKRs, the only one I can see turning it around for
them is "Lead the Way in Augmented Reality". The others are fluff in wording
and in punch, and I can't see them gaining ground against IG when IG executes
on these ideas much better than Snap does.

------
iamleppert
They had a working thing and then ruined it. I’m not sure how they managed to
do that with a product change. Didn’t they have a way to release changes and
measure impact before just forcing it on their entire user base?

Once a company gets to this level, they need to recognize the role that luck
played into their original product and design. They hit a resonance with
people, and it was probably more luck and timing than anything else. Changes
to that core product need to be treated as an experiment and conducted as
such. Show some discipline.

You can still innovate but those ideas should be made to stand on their own,
grow on their own. Just because you have control over a platform with millions
of users and can make changes doesn’t automatically mean you can do no wrong
at this point. It just means you will have more time and resources before
those mistakes take you out of the game completely.

He should be punished for his mistakes by the board installing some
experienced adult supervision for a while until he shows he can fix his
current mess (reverse negative growth) and innovate in at least an additional
major product category tangential to Snap. If he can’t do that in the next 24
months, he should step down for the good of the company.

~~~
askafriend
I think you hit the nail on the head here. There were reports that came out
from several sources that Evan ignored all feedback from product and design
including hard numbers from early tests. There were apparently several groups
internally that tried to stop the massive changes from dropping without
adequate testing and iteration. Those groups were overridden by Evan in favor
of "vision" and that apparent lack of discipline led to the situation they're
in today.

If Evan can't show that he has the discipline to lead a company at this stage
of it's life in the public market then the board should absolutely give him
the boot in the next 24 months.

I think the narrative of "product visionary" has been spun a bit too hard by
the tech media and it likely has gotten to his head.

He also took a $500mm bonus for successfully executing the IPO at a time when
the company lost over $700mm in 2017. That's not a great look - but I digress.

~~~
asmithmd1
> then the board should absolutely give him the boot in the next 24 months.

Very funny, Snapchat has two classes of stock and he owns enough of the kind
that matters that no one can oust him. I looked through the S-1 when they were
going public and decided owning the shares they were selling to the public was
the equivalent of a "board observer" seat. You are free to watch him run his
company, but it is still his company

[https://www.recode.net/2017/2/21/14670314/snap-ipo-stock-
vot...](https://www.recode.net/2017/2/21/14670314/snap-ipo-stock-voting-
structure)

~~~
sireat
The sad thing is that it applies to many other companies these days, most
notably Facebook, Google et al.

Why do people buy common shares which give them no voting rights as a
shareholder?

Sure while company is minting money (or debt and marketshare) you can find a
greater fool to offload your shares.

However when things turn the Zynga way, what recourse do you have with these
no vote shares?

At least Bond holders and Preferred Shareholders have certain rights.

PS Then there are the Chinese stocks such as BABA where you do not even own
the assets of the main company but I digress..

~~~
Animats
I think we're going to see less of that. A few companies with founder control
through multiple classes of stock have screwed up badly. It's now a negative
with investors.

For many decades, the New York Stock Exchange refused to list stocks that had
multiple classes of stock, except for a few companies such as Ford Motor that
were grandfathered in. But they no longer have enough clout to make that
stick.

Google and Facebook got away with it because they were highly profitable
before the IPO. Snap was not like that.[1] They went public while still losing
money, and with way too high a valuation. It's been all downhill since the
IPO.

[1]
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertberger/2017/03/07/snapcha...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertberger/2017/03/07/snapchat-
ipo-dont-confuse-popular-with-profitable/#5bdba09f2b73)

~~~
bilbo0s
> _Google and Facebook got away with it because they were highly profitable
> before the IPO. Snap was not like that..._

So basically, we'll see it with the companies that are _profitable_ at the
time of their ipo's, but we _won 't_ see it with the companies that are
_unprofitable_ , (and maybe even losing money), at the time of their ipo's.

Sounds to me like the future Facebooks and Googles of the world will continue
to set up structures like these. Before anyone jumps down my throat, I'm not
complaining. I know, it's the founder's company. I get that. I'm free not to
invest if I don't like the terms. I just wanted to point out that HN User
"Animats'" conclusion that founders will choose this structure less and less
is flawed. It really does seem to me that this structure is just going to be
more and more of a reality in the future for any of the startups that are
actually worth buying into. (ie - Any of the startups that actually _make
money_.)

In the end, the founders of the winning companies don't want their money or
power diluted.

------
Yhippa
Why did they ignore Android usability and performance for so long? Also, I
guess one of the cool things was the mystery meat UX but I wonder if that hurt
them as they tried to garner broad appeal? Sometimes I see other people's
Snaps and have no idea how they did certain things like effects, text, or
interactive elements.

~~~
addicted
They explicitly focused on teens in rich countries with high end phones and
high speed mobile connections. They wanted to target that “rich” niche.

------
kposehn
Snapchat has failed the test of feature vs. product.

Everything that made Snapchat unique is something easily emulated in a myriad
of other apps. When you strip away the interface, the only unique part of it
was the network/aggregator-effect they have. However, they were much smaller
than Instagram and as a result would be fighting an uphill battle with a
product that already has the network and could easily duplicate the features.

~~~
askafriend
I think of any social media company as an interface into a network. If the
network isn't fundamentally the moat then that's a problem because the
interface can often (but maybe not always) be a commodity. In the early
stages, a small social media company may use its novel interface as the moat.
Interface moats can be fragile but they buy the company some time to grow the
network and gives the initial set of early adopters a reason to join. However
at maturity, the interface alone can't continue to be the only thing that can
defend or provide a moat for a business.

The problem with Snap (as you pointed out) is that the network characteristics
are similar to Facebook's or Instagram's....aka friends and family....aka
people in your phone contacts. Facebook's fundamental value is that they were
one of the _first_ ones to capture the graph that already existed in your
phone and brought it online at scale. However, the actual network they built
isn't as novel or as difficult to build as something like Twitter which is a
graph that existed nowhere else before.

LinkedIn is similar to Facebook in that the business contacts probably already
existed in your phone or on a bunch of business cards. But because we don't
want our professional lives and our personal lives to share the same spaces,
LinkedIn was able to capture the professional opportunity by bringing business
contacts online.

What does this all have to do with Snap? Well Snap has the unfortunate
position of having similar network characteristics to Facebook's while _also_
being in a similar social space albeit heavily skewed younger (I consider
Instagram to be in a roughly similar social space). Snap probably felt like
the demographic skew alone would be enough to balance out this weak position
but I suspect they're finding out quickly that it is not since Instagram is
proving to be a thriving space for young people too.

On the other hand, networks like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Nextdoor are all
either unique networks underneath the primary interface or they share
different social spaces that people usually don't want mixed. Anyone can make
an interface but it's incredibly hard to grow a network in a particular social
space. The latter almost always makes for a stronger moat. Snap needs to
figure out how to make progress on the latter because I think many of their
large problems stem from not having enough of a moat at the network level.

~~~
kposehn
This is really well thought out. Thank you for posting :)

------
ryanwhitney
Snapchat’s biggest value to me is that they aren’t owned by facebook. So many
jumped to Instagram and use it as a cross-platform messenger now as well—I
don’t want to use Facebook (Instagram) messenger.

I would love a more legit chat feature. It’s great that you can keep messages
around for longer now. A safer UI that prevented accidentally adding the wrong
friend to an image share would be awesome, as would as unsends.

Unfortunate that their main revenue source seems to be really, really bad
clickbait stories.

~~~
Anaphylaxis
At least the memes are decent.

------
ma2rten
_Most of the incremental growth in our core markets like the US, UK, and
France will have to come from older users who generate higher average revenue
per user._

 _Changing the design language of our product and improving our marketing and
communications around Snapchat will help users understand our value_

 _Aging-up our community in core markets will also help the media,
advertisers, and Wall Street understand Snapchat._

To be honest, this seems like wishful thinking to me. It's going to very hard
for them to regain momentum in their current demographic. It's going to be
close to impossible to create a network effect outside of their current
demographic.

------
pavlov
_”Adults, not teens. Messaging, not Stories. Developing markets, not the
U.S.”_

So... Snap basically wants to be Facebook?

Adults, messaging, developing world — Facebook is already enormously
entrenched in the overlap of those markets thanks to Messenger and WhatsApp.
FB has also shown the ability to clone Snap’s product innovations.

I have a feeling 2019 is the year when Snap is acquired. The market cap is
already below $10 billion.

~~~
tEMporality7
> "Developing markets, not the U.S.”

I thought he hated developing markets?

~~~
msaharia
“This app is only for rich people,” Spiegel said, according to Pompliano. “I
don’t want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain.”

Delicious irony.

[https://variety.com/2017/biz/news/snapchat-evan-spiegel-
only...](https://variety.com/2017/biz/news/snapchat-evan-spiegel-only-for-
rich-people-anthony-pompliano-1202028526/)

------
village-idiot
When I was much younger, I thought that adults didn’t know how to use new
tech, and that’s why they didn’t bother with new fangled tech like Facebook.

Now that I’m closing in on my 30th birthday, I realize I had it all wrong. I
can use snapchat, I just don’t understand _why_ I would want to use it.

I’m curious what Snapchat will do to try and entice people like me into using
it. From where I sit, I’m having a very hard time imagining what they could
possibly do.

~~~
stevenjohns
Snapchat filled a niche that sat between directly messaging your friend/family
group and putting something on display on Facebook. You could share random
thoughts, things that happened in your day or interesting things you come
across.

It was walled version of Twitter with a focus on photo and video.

What made it really interesting for me is that, because it uses your phone
book to gather your contacts, you end up with a somewhat different circle to
who you might have on Facebook. There were some people I hadn't spoken to for
years, or people who were in my friends circle that I didn't talk to much,
that became some of my most-interacted with people on Snapchat.

------
candiodari
And once again you read "slowed down and ruined it" (aside from the language,
which is too strong) ... people REALLY respond to latency.

I wish Google would pay attention to this. Especially Gmail. It's just
unacceptably slow and there is just no excuse.

------
dhnsmakala
I am just surprised that a publicly traded, multi-billion dollar company
either did not think to A/B test major changes to the product or did not know
how to properly conduct A/B testing.

I assumed every one of the top apps/websites did this automatically, but I
guess I was wrong.

~~~
dannyw
They certainly did, but reports are that the CEO overruled the data and even
multiple internal efforts against the change.

------
fjsolwmv
Did Snapchat really flop, or is the equity market undergoing a correction and
return to sanity? Snapchat was a fun fad, not a sustainable enterprise.
Everyone involved should have taken money off the table in the high times and
realized the bubble component would pop.

~~~
askafriend
You can call it a fad, but the truth is that they had and still have the
opportunity to build a real business.

The reality is that despite how seemingly old the internet is, we're still in
the relatively early stages. There aren't that many companies globally
building content systems at scale and working through the challenges of what
that means - at scale. Those skills in an organization are extraordinary
valuable as old media starts to crumble and information infrastructure on the
internet becomes the new fundamental fabric of society - moreso than even
today.

I know that sounds a bit grandoise but that's the thinking behind the big bets
behind companies like this. If Snap can just get some experienced, less
impulsive leadership in place - they can still build an extremely valuable
global media property. 180mm daily actives is no joke.

As you can tell, I'm skeptical of Snap in it's current state of management but
I'm bullish on social media overall.

------
gaius
_Snapchat is still bleeding money, losing $353 million last quarter._

I literally do not understand what they can be spending that much money on,
can anyone clue me in? It can't be on infra and bandwidth.

~~~
addicted
For one thing, they are contractually obligated to pay Google and Amazon at
least $600mm per year for the next few years.

So that’s $150mm per quarter, as a minimum (if their usage doesn’t meet that
amount they have to pay the difference).

They are paying something like $200mm on R&D/quarter, and over $100mm on
advertising and administrative each.

Their “cost of revenues” (I’m not exactly sure what this means for them...I
wonder if it is discounts offered to advertisers) is another $190mm.

So a few hundred million here and a few hundred million there adds up to a
$350mm quarterly loss.

What’s interesting is their R&D expenses have dropped 20% from the year ago
quarter, while their sales and marketing have increased substantially. That
does not bode well for the future either in my opinion (although it’s easily
arguable that even $200mm per quarter on R&D seems excesssive for Snap).

Edit: I quickly compared them to Twitter, which isn’t known as the most
leanest of run companies in the first place, but Twitter’s R&D costs are
$139mm/quarter compared to over $200mm for SNAP. Their administraative costs
are $74mm/quarter, compared to over $100mm for SNAP. How is SNAP spending so
much more money than Twitter, and clearly producing a fraction of the output?

------
sgt
Snapchat may have lost a lot of users across the world, but it's still
extremely popular in Norway. I'd say probably more than half the population
aged 18-50 has it installed.

~~~
sytelus
Any idea why?

~~~
mstg
From what I've seen, people are addicted to streaks.

~~~
sgt
If that's the case, the popularity won't necessarily translate into revenue.

------
alexrs95
Oh, so now Evan Spiegel want to prioritize developing countries...
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/17/snapchat-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/17/snapchat-
denies-claim-ceo-did-not-want-to-expand-into-poor-india)

~~~
rchaud
I'm pretty sure he still doesn't. He just needs to boost the user numbers so
the eventual takeover price tag isn't embarrassingly low.

------
Kaveren
I don't use Snapchat, but now I understand why the redesign I saw so much hate
on was pushed into production. I can't speak to the specifics of what changed,
but I don't see why you wouldn't even A/B test such a massive change to your
service.

Instagram Stories seem like they might've had a big impact on the popularity
of the app as well.

------
cpitman
Coming off of the recent SEC case against Elon Musk, does anyone know how they
look at leaks from public companies, especially high impact ones like this?
Are there any examples of SEC action in the past?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
The SEC allows companies to make corporate announcements through social media.
Tweets of a public company’s CEO are thus corporate announcements. Leaks are
reported on by third parties, and thus don’t fall under the same rules. The
leaker might get in trouble for Reg FD violations, or for violating an NDA,
but given the reduced risk of damage (particularly when the leaked information
is not fabricated), it’s been a low enforcement priority.

------
nicodjimenez
Success in entertainment (and this includes social media startups) is really
hard to replicate! I wonder why that is. It seems easier to consistently start
enterprise software companies than it is to create new social media apps.

Facebook's strategy of just buying what works and creating a media
conglomerate for advertisers seems very smart to the casual observer.

~~~
felipeerias
Maybe unconventional successes in entertainment tend to be hard to replicate
because they require years gaining expertise and creating a strong product
_and_ that the ebbs and flows of public taste happen to favour that product
when it comes out.

If you're lucky, you might score a long shot at a moving target from very far
away, but it will be hard to score a second one.

------
mendeza
Snapchat’s lens studio product is a definite category defining product. As an
AR developer, it’s been soo much fun and enjoyable creating AR experiences,
and its one of the first times I can make an experience and directly engage a
large audience.

------
jorblumesea
I'm not sure they can make a comeback, Instagram ripped off all the good parts
and executed on their vision better. Adding all of the celebrity ads and
discover feature was a huge mistake, all users wanted to do was communicate
with their friends.

------
Grue3
Makes me laugh every time when people lionize some platform because "all the
cool teens are on it!". It's obviously not a demographic you can profit from.
And they will easily abandon your platform once they grow up.

------
rhizome
15 pages? It's not a leak if it's meant to get out, and 15 pages means it was
meant to get out.

------
mvkel
He blames “impatient strategic moves.” If they’re done hastily, are they even
strategic?

------
14
They forced me off their platform. I have an older iPhone 4s and can not
update past ios 9.3.5. Snapchat eventually forced an update and that required
me having the latest ios which I could not even do since Apple stopped
supporting this device years ago despite it still being a pretty good phone.

------
ForHackernews
Maybe this will be the beginning of the end for the social media bubble?

~~~
Kaveren
Is there really a bubble? The players look fairly solidified to me.

You have Facebook, which might not be as cool in all countries with younger
users, and has had a lot of controversy surrounding fake news, election
influence, and privacy, but it's doing well.

You have Instagram, which is doing very well, was a great Facebook
acquisition, helping their parent company even more.

You have Twitter, which seems to be struggling by, and is still very relevant.

Reddit is doing very well if you can even call it social meddia.

Apps like Yik Yak, Whisper, Snapchat, and such all seem to have been going
downhill or are gone for some time now. But I think the players we have are
here to stay.

~~~
mcintyre1994
Reddit is certainly trying to pivot toward social media, with probably the
least enthusiasistic and most hostile user base for that change they could
possibly have.

~~~
artursapek
The magic of reddit has always been in its detachment from real-world social
structure. Reddit is successful because it grouped users by common interests
and eliminated the burden of having your real identity associated with your
online alter-ego. If they ruin that in an effort to sell more ads, it will be
a sad loss.

------
georgespencer
Here's coverage without an insanely user hostile "WE ARE PART OF OATH YOUR
PRIVACY IS IMPORTANT (BUT IT'S DIFFICULT TO FIND SETTINGS TO DISABLE COOKIES)"
lightbox which cannot be dismissed:

[https://cheddar.com/videos/snap-ceo-evan-spiegel-company-
mem...](https://cheddar.com/videos/snap-ceo-evan-spiegel-company-memo-
on-2019-strategic-goals-and-profitability)

~~~
wgx
Ublock Origin plus Cookiemonster list - I never see a cookie banner.

~~~
el_duderino
Thanks for mentioning this[1]! I just realized that I was only using the
Prebake[2] list, which doesn't appear to be actively maintained.

[1] [https://www.fanboy.co.nz/fanboy-
cookiemonster.txt](https://www.fanboy.co.nz/fanboy-cookiemonster.txt)

[2]
[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/liamja/Prebake/master/obtr...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/liamja/Prebake/master/obtrusive.txt)

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endlessvoid94
They're fucked.

~~~
fermienrico
Please post something useful, insightful or worthy of discussion. Otherwise,
don't post at all. Thank you.

~~~
vntok
Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam
or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them
instead. If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

~~~
fermienrico
Thanks, I didn’t realize I can flag it. I shall do that going forward.

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logicallee
>The biggest mistake we made with our redesign was compromising our core
product value of being the fastest way to communicate,” Spiegel stresses
throughout the memo regarding “Project Cheetah.”

Hmmmmmmmmmm. The Google Mail redesign comes to mind. Gmail has 1.4 billion
users. (April 2018 figure, Gmail's Wikipedia page.)

Google management, if you're listening: the writing is on the wall. You have
it there black and white: "The biggest mistake we made with our redesign was
compromising our core product value of being the fastest"

In this comment I outline some reach goals for you:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17873576](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17873576)

(That comment is written in a wishful style, what I know you can do and what I
imagine you can do.)

You can do it! Just hire the best. Put the best on that team. 1.2 billion
users mean you can afford it. You can do it.

Do it. You can do it. I believe in you with all my heart.

