What went wrong with Snap, Netflix and Uber? | Hacker News Reader

What went wrong with Snap, Netflix and Uber?

economist.com

30 pointssien29 comments

I still don’t have Uber figured out. I had their app in my phone for years. When I tried to use it I discovered I’d been shadow banned and every attempt to use the platform ends in an error just before a driver is assigned. Same result with Uber eats and postmates.

Sometimes I contemplate getting a job at Uber just so I can figure out why I’m banned then quitting. It’s probably something dumb like a transposed digit or they banned the previous person to have this number - everyone on earth has a unique phone number that doesn’t change their entire lives, right? Wrong.

Uber's users are merely the means to extract as much cash as possible from investors and drivers alike.

The idea of Uber is for the Management drones to skim as much money as possible off the sucker investors and drivers. Uber is never intended to make a profit as a real business would have to, to remain in business.

Seems that the investors are finally starting to wake up that they're just suckers after all.

Hmm I don't know what they're doing in the US, but where I am Uber seems to be a decent service.

However, it costs as much as taxis so it's mostly a matter of preference what you order. And it has competition from Bolt.

However, it costs as much as taxis

So now it's suckering not only the investors and drivers, but also the users. And still not making a profit like taxi companies must do. So where's all that money going?

Excellent business model for the Managers. It will be interesting to see what happens to their salaries and bonuses in the near future.

Don't know about suckering users. It costs the same and I don't have to explain to them on the phone where to pick me up, which is a plus.

As much as I dislike a lot of aspects of Uber & Lyft it's actually useful and provides a monumentally better service than taxis in my city (NYC). Seats are usually cleaner, you're not stuck in a car with a V8 engine burning who knows how much fuel to jerk back and forth between lights, less smells, they won't refuse your ride if you're going the wrong way, etc.

Is it a viable business? Probably not but it's useful as a global taxi network. Hopefully someone can make it work without shitting on drivers.

I had the same issue and reinstalling the app fixed it. it started when I got a new phone and some of my data must have been corrupted on the initial app download

Money stopped being cheap.

Netflix is clearly a different story from Snap and Uber.

Right? Netflix is churning out a profit with a ratio on the interval [20, 25] depending on the day. I really don’t see how it belongs in the same category as the other two who don’t have a finite P/E ratio.

Yeah this article only has this to say about Netflix:

> Netflix—a child of the 1990s but a streamer only since 2007—turns a profit but its revenue growth was down to 6% year on year in the third quarter, compared with a historical average of more than 20%.

So its revenue is still growing year-on-year, but not quite at the breakneck pace it was in the past? I wouldn't call that a dying company. Most of the other companies have never turned a profit, no idea why the article is putting Netflix in that category.

https://archive.ph/sZogY

Snapchat is the only real social media app in my opinion. People seems to use it to actually connect with their friends via Stories, Messages and even SnapMaps. They don't mindless scroll like on other social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, etc...

However, it seems like Snapchat hasn't gotten that so they keep pushing useless content like Discover and Spotlight...

because there is no way to monetize sending pictures to your friends

Out of the three, Snapchat is the one product that I do not know who the target customer is. Boomers are on Facebook, millennials are on Instagram, gen-z are on TikTok.

Who is Snapchat for then?

Snapchat seems like it's dying. A lot of people I know around my age (I'm in high school) either deleted it or only have it to keep up their streaks. However, it seems like younger kids (elementary maybe and middle) are still using it so maybe their demographics are just shifting younger?

elementary kids are using Snapchat? holy shit. please tell me you're making this up

I don't know for sure because I don't have any relatives or other people of that age I regularly interact with but I wouldn't be surprised, I know 11-12 year olds using it tho that would be early middle school not elementary I guess.

Why would that be surprising? Of course they are. Nothing "holy shit" about it.

Conversations and photos people want deleted from local history

Maybe what you say it's true but according to a survey[0] it's the most popular app/site U.S. teens use after YouTube, TikTok, Instagram. And excluding YT, the two others and Snapchat have about the same usage.

[0]: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social...

im 26 and i use it a couple times a week. its by far the easiest way to send a picture to a bunch of people without having them all in a groupchat

None of them were a real business. Snap could have been.

What is the real business for snap?

Ads for eyeballs.

their ads hurt my eyeballs. feels like there's an ad every damn second. how can people tolerate this

User data and ads, like all other players in that space?

your text and pics only delete every day if you pay

they keep your pics as blackmail. just store them for 5 years until reaching critical mass then blackmail everyone all at once

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