Snapchat reportedly hit 160M daily users and $400M revenue in 2016 | Hacker News Reader

Snapchat reportedly hit 160M daily users and $400M revenue in 2016

techcrunch.com

62 pointsprostoalex52 comments

As someone who never really "got" Snapchat, I found this interesting:

>Snapchat has done an impressive job soaking up attention by covering three different use cases with a single app: private messaging, social media Stories broadcasting, and professional Discover content. These work together to give people something to do even if their friends don’t post interesting stories, they’re waiting for people to reply, or they don’t resonate with the featured publishers.

Most people between the ages of 10-30 have been conditioned to pull out their phone during the slightest feeling of boredom, awkwardness, loneliness, or of course notification noise / buzz. It then becomes a question of which App gets opened first which usually is decided by the amount of 'reward' generated by the action.

I can only speak to my demo, but the order is usually:

Tier 1:

* Text messaging

* Snapchat

Tier 1.5:

* Tinder

* Mobile games (only applies to a subset of users 'gamers')

Tier 2:

* Facebook

* Instagram

Tier 3:

* Browser

* Mobile games (most people)

* Other

You'll notice personal communications falls above content sharing. Snapchat is a definitive type of personal communication and is pretty firmly planted (IMO).

I'd put Imgur and Reddit in tier 1

Do people just browse Imgur or what is there to do? I've never gone to the site other than to upload or through a link (mostly from Reddit).

Yes you just browse it. It has public posts and comments. Most of the popular images become popular on Imgur first, then they make their way to Reddit.

Yes, it has it's own discussion/community separate from Reddit. It mainly serves as a source/aggregate for Reddit image content.

If I pull out my phone I go right to HN, or the current book I'm reading. I'm definitely old now...

Me too.

Same here. In a sense HN is a sort of restricted social network for me, or even a tribe if you wish.

Except we don't gather around the fire anymore, we gather around a website and exchange stories not of hunting animals, but hunting bugs.

I'm still fairly new to HN but I love the quality of posts and expertise in almost every technical thread.

I think 27 is old for HN, so I'm right there with ya. The tinder and snapchat generation blew right by me. I still use twitter and instagram, but I don't immediately reach for them. I typically go to HN, an article, or another piece of reading material when I'm bored.

Oh no; 27 can't be old. I can't be old D: 27 isn't old!

Haha I'm 28, from the doom and gloom I read on HN about age discrimination I should be entering retirement! :(

Given majority of people exit their companies and retire by 30 - 35 these days, 27 is becoming quite old in the HN workforce.

"Majority" hmmm...

Based on Snap's own numbers it would indicate Instagram is a tier 1.

Seems like Snapchat is growing faster though

Not really.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/02/slowchat/

One of the benefits of publicly traded and soon-to-be-traded companies is that they release things like DAU in their S-1s and quarterly reports, so we don't have to rely on anecdote.

Disclaimer: I work at Facebook (but don't follow this sort of thing beyond reading the quarterly reports every once in a while)

His demo is likely younger, and thus uses Snapchat more frequently than instagram

I thought it was for sexting..?

Everything is for sexting.

Touché.

I assume Snapchat has a Disney-esque size valuation around $176B. All these social networks morph into media companies and Disney is a good fit because it caters primarily to the youth.

20% per year is not impressing to be honest. Don't get me wrong, I admire them as a company, but the grow rate is too slow, to compete with top social platforms.

Better a company that generates revenue than one that uses all it's money on growth and has billions $ negative. I hate this idea of a growth rate being "too slow", all it does is encourage monopolisation which is bad for people. Edit: spelling

I'd honestly be curious to why this comment is being downvoted so much, as I've often found myself agreeing with this refrain.

To pre-answer the common rebuttal I get, that VCs are taking moonshots at the chance of a VERY HIGH return; I'd ask why not look at VC investments in the sense of a more traditional portfolio, where you'd have your growth stocks, your value stocks, etc. If I could find a vehicle that reliably gave 20% YOY I'd throw fistfulls of money at it.

So can someone enlighten me as to why this isn't a viable way of looking at VC investment?

It's not a viable way to look at investing in ad companies. Advertising has historically been zero-sum (about 2% of the economy), and there's huge returns to scale (more data, bigger advertisers, etc). Unless your inventory is unique (which it isn't), you need reach (which is why TV is/was such a great platform). Look at Twitter, which is having a extremely difficult time w/ ads because of that lack of scale.

In ads, you want to be GOOG/FB, not TWTR.

>id honestly be curious to why this comment is being downvoted so much

Because it confuses revenues and earnings? It defends Snap chat for not having "negative billions" when, in fact, it is has negative billions.

Snapchat doesn't have earnings (they lost $514 million dollars in 2016) so they really need to demonstrate ongoing growth in either number of users or revenue per user.

And their GCP contract is for $400M a year?

I came here wondering the exact same thing. Seems insane.

I've been hearing they are losing a lot of users to Instagram, since the latter basically copied the best features of Snapchat. Anyone has any opinion on the topic?

IG is definitely ramping up features to compete. But I have a weird feeling that it's going to end up being a camel. Snapchat on the other hand, is being too selective with their advertising channels. They require ridiculously expensive contracts that reflect the way TV ads are sold. What really bothers me is that the stories are too short and I cant produce content and publish it there.

Instagram's stories have been evolving very quickly.

They've added the ability to tap on usernames written in the videos, to take you straight to their profile, or open up an in app browser to look at websites and catalogues, or link to the geotagged place.

It'll be a game of cat and mouse.

Snapchat users are still posting more on snapchat, and sharing subsets of what they posted on instagram. Instagram only users are using the stories on Instagram exclusively.

Should I be experiencing FOMO over Snapchat? Is Snapchat one of those things you only get into if all of your friends are doing it? (like, say heroin for example)

It is one of those things, but not like heroin is.

I once read this article: https://www.buzzfeed.com/benrosen/how-to-snapchat-like-the-t...

which didn't make me feel that I was missing out on anything.

Or perhaps I should say I know I'm missing out on something but I'm glad I'm missing out.

as another non-snapchat user, i feel it's like the quote "The only winning move is not to play"

There is nothing wrong with trying out Snapchat. Download the app.

As far as I know, there is no people discovery on Snapchat. To find people to add (so you can receive their snaps – or video messages), go on Instagram and check out user profiles. Snapchat users post their Snapchat usernames everywhere.

Familiarize yourself with the UI. It is quite confusing until you have a mental image of how the screens are linked so you know where you can swipe in which direction to get to the next screen.

From what I can see, Snapchat is dominated by teenagers. Everyone has an account, even if they don’t post, just to watch other people’s videos. The stuff is very mundane and gets boring fast if you are not actually friends with the people who post. There is a lot of posing and trying to look pretty. After a few weeks I deleted the app.

If you don't have anyone else from your good friends using it, there's no point to have it yourself.

If you do, it can be a lot of fun and you don't have to worry about polluting your camera roll or your long-term social media footprint.

bounce from Tinder to Snatchchat

Heaviest app on my phone ever.

Yea I don't have the latest Nexus smartphone, but I am sure it's not coded as good as it could and should be.

> but I am sure it's not coded as good as it could and should be.

Nothing ever is, except for NASA's shuttle control systems.

Obviously, but no need to be pedantic, you know what I meant by that.

Snapchat is terrible on Android. I'm surprised it got so popular (when FB had a real heavy Android app I feel like a lot of people were using the web interface instead).

Yeah, and honestly I can't understand the decision of opening the camera in transparency right on the first screen of the app, adding the camera opening time to the rest.

And that feature only looks kind of bragging to me: "hey, look at how cool we are", and I am sure some users will not even notice it.

Anyway, don't they test it and see how slow it ?

Or are they one of those company only interested in iOS and only developing for Android marginally?

Good for them

Why should we trust these numbers?

Because they publicly filed for IPO today and released all these numbers.

If they lie to the SEC their IPO will not be so good

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