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Comment by ahmed_ds | Hacker News Reader

I kinda feel sad for Snap for even trying.

I remember Snap was one of the very first meme stock. They failed with their camera spectacles. They failed to keep up with computer vision compared to TikTok and shift towards Gen Z. They failed to come up with a decent creators monetization system.

Recently I read that they are signing MOUs with entertainment companies that involved AR tech. And now they are involved in making drones. Drone is a super hard market to enter even with some industry experience, case in point Gopro.

Snap really shows how much the entire social media as an industry is struggling. Snap's future is bleak, it would be interesting to see how long they last.

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I mean this in the kindest way possible: I suspect you're out of touch.

Snapchat is used by more than 90% of 13-24 year olds in the USA and Gen-Z increasingly prefers it to any other form of communications social media. The ephemeral, personal nature of snap has been enormously popular with the youngest generation, and there's no sign of it stopping. Latest Q1 reports show daily users up 18% annually, 2 million more than forecast.

Are they looking for more money? Yes, as is their fiduciary responsibility as a publicly traded company... but that doesn't mean they're flagging.

They're down 45% in the last 6 months. 53% the last 12. They're flagging. None of their cutesy hardware has taken off in the past (remember spectacles?).

In the last 6 months Netflix is down 71%, Nvidia 23%, Facebook 36%, AMD 25%, Amazon 14%, General Motors 29%, Alphabet 20%, Volkswagen 32%, etc.

Are these all flagging companies as well?

Disingenuous.

Snap is nearly its IPO price. SNAP's last quarter revenue was down from 4 straight quarters of growth.

FB, NVDA, AMD, AMZN, GM, GOOGL, etc. are all up orders of magnitude from IPO.

It's a fair argument to say that the market is being corrected, and that SNAP is not on a trajectory similar to it's peers (FB, TWTR).

I take your point, but Netflix probably yes. Facebook, maybe. VW and GM, probably yes.

I think it's worth noting that their stock is still up 185% since March of 2020. In spite of the prior failures at hardware, the app is still incredibly popular among young people.

Also worth adding that they are only up %6 from the IPO price.

IPO price is just what the most enthusiastic investors hope it's worth.

It's worth more than that, sure, but the correction happened almost immediately after the IPO.

Which is why being so far up from its bottom 2 years ago is important.

That's fair.

Although measuring it from March 20' is somewhat deceptive as the whole marked dipped, that wasn't snap specific.

ARKK, the top performing ETF of 2021, is down 60% over the last year. Tech, in general, has declined substantially, mostly due to interest rates rising.

Huh? Snap has really buckled down and gone from a forgone conclusion to having record quarters of revenue growth and monetization. They have repeatedly focused on digging in and trying new things.

Spectacles wasn't a ground-breaking idea, but it was a GREAT innovative shot which was hard to copy by FB at the time. Similarly this is another great innovation hard to have others copy. Is it niche? Yeah probably, but it shows they are looking at ALL the interesting areas.

For what it's worth, Snap has been ahead of the game on AR filters and AR tech for a while. Releasing this doesn't imply they aren't also doing work there.

Yeah, many would think so, me included, but I also recognize strange as it is, there is a whole younger generation that it has been the defacto communications app for like 4-5 years now, so that's something to ride.

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