When a company like Uber is raising insane amounts of money I think to myself - "ok, they're working on vehicle automation and other ambitious projects, it makes sense".<p>When a company like snapchat is looking for 4B in addition to existing funding I am left completely dumbfounded.<p>Can someone please explain why they would need this much cash?
I have yet to speak with anyone who thinks Snapchat's valuation is realistic and that their business model will sustain them. When I see this I just think of Twitter all over again.<p>I would love to hear arguments supporting Snapchat though.
I'm surprised (rather, disappointed) that the article doesn't make any comparisons to Facebook's IPO. For today's 14-to-25-year-olds, Snapchat is the new Facebook, in terms of user engagement, market penetration, mindshare -- so it stands to reason in terms of valuation it would be too.<p>There are some important differences, of course. Facebook owns multiple properties that mount competition to Snap Inc: Instagram, Messenger, Whatsapp, the original Facebook; Snapchat subsumes all these usecases in a single app that you'd be hard-pressed not to find on a teen's phone today. And it does so by making it optional to curate a permanent, indexable, discoverable, idealized public identity.<p>To many, that's strictly better than anything Facebook has put out -- a company that nonetheless commanded a high valuation, performed an IPO (albeit rocky), and now posts a strong profit.
I'm a professional photographer and even when I had a medium audience on Snapchat (1000-3000 views/snap), I switched to Instagram stories.
For content creators Snapchat is not good at all. The discoverability problem they have is a serious issue for me.
I tried to get back into snapchat last week. "Surely they've made the Android app usable by now."<p>Why is the android app so trash? Why is the UI so convoluted? I <i>want</i> to like and use snapchat because clearly everybody is "getting" something that I'm not, but I genuinely cannot figure out the UI or take more than a few pics without the thing crashing.
There's a sales technique where the first person to state a value causes other people to pick values around it. So Snapchat struck first and says that they are worth 40 billion. Minions listen to that and think that 35 billion would be a bargain.
I see talk of Spectacles being Snapchat's next big thing. However, 90% of the time the popular Snapchat users are filming themselves. Not what they're seeing. So what good would Spectacles be for them?
I can't wait to buy. This one is going to be a good one even if most of the juice has been squeezed by the time it IPOs.<p>I think people are really hungry for some tech stocks with the kind of brand SnapChat has to invest in. There will be naysayers, Facebook had those but boy did people make a lot of money.
dont forget about sponsored filters. should be a boon for sc. organic marketing. would bet this revenue surpasses sponsored stories. comparisons to fb and twitter are a little off. SC is more of a messaging service than social media<p><i>Evan Spiegel isn’t building the next Facebook or Twitter. To some that may be obvious, but it’s important to understand. That’s because Spiegel is driven by the idea that people are looking for alternatives to their curated Facebook and Instagram personas. It’s not a social site, it’s a communication app with a large dose of entertainment on the side.</i><p>if youre complaining about discoverabilty you just dont get it and thats OK<p>[1] <a href="http://www.recode.net/2016/5/9/11594144/evan-spiegel-snapchat" rel="nofollow">http://www.recode.net/2016/5/9/11594144/evan-spiegel-snapcha...</a>
FWIW, have only opened Snapchat once since IG Stories debut.. 28 and consider myself tech savvy.<p>That being said, the only defense it seems Snapchat has is their "instantaneously direct messaging" i.e. being able to send to one person at a time. When or if IG does this, well...
I'm passive and light user of Snapchat, because I'm following around just 40 people and sporadically use it for messaging. I was really enjoying the Snapchat stories, much more than the messaging. I actually think that the whole messaging experience on Snapchat is pretty poor.<p>Anyway the point is, that I used to have around 30 stories a day to watch before Instagram introduced their stories. Currently I'm around 10 a day and most people who are on Insta and Snapchat prefer Instagram.<p>Is that just me, or you see the same decline in usage of Snapchat stories?
Just speaking personally, but I thought the hype around Snapchat was on the decline. The app seemed to get slower with every update and people within my social circles weren't using it as much as a few years ago.
Their backers and they stand to make money by hyping it up. They are working their channels to get puff pieces written. Not one article I have read is critical of them. Shows you the power of their backers. Doesn't mean you should invest but I bet their backers are powerful enough to make that stock pop the first day.