Snapchat Raising a New Round at a $10B Valuation
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Anyone want to make a bet? I say within 6 months they'll be agreed to be acquired for cash/stocks. The only other option is to start acquiring other companies, but that's too risky long-term for investors.
"Snapchat has peaked" or "snapchat is doomed" are each consistent with independence in a lot of cases. "Snapchat can IPO" as well as "undefined" are also.
The only case I can see for "Snapchat in a quick sale" is if there were a strong #2 from FB, Twitter, Google, Microsoft and another of them bought Snapchat as the competitor. As it is, I don't think it's a direct competitor to Twitter/FB core business, so they're not forced to buy it right now.
I agree that US law could be an impediment to building such a thing.
Would you do me the favor of explicating? How can I make your explaining this to me worth your while?
Maybe it's just my friends that have stopped caring about Snapchat and it would be interesting to see if anyone else here has noticed similar behaviour of waning interest amongst friends and colleagues and the use of Snapchat.
We all know unless Snapchat pivot the app and make it appealing again, it will only to continue to witness decline. Look to Foursquare for some great parallels, at its peak, everyone was using it at one stage and then people lost interest. The fact they had to open up yet another app got tiring and eventually people gave up. They're entering dangerous territory, it would be best for them to, tread lightly.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/08/26/report-sna...
Not saying I necessarily agree with the investment, but this is just how things have been lately.
This is simply no outrageous in any way and it was likely a very competed investment - I do think that Snapchat can achieve a value much larger than $10B or even $20B. Outrageous I would say is $1 trillion.
I said nothing of the sort. I said that Snapchat is not worth $10 billion and likely never will be. For reference, my exact words were:
"I just can't take seriously any VC valuing this company at $10 billion"
Maybe the valuation is based on the number of ransom-able pics in their database. :)
EDIT: Additionally, their rumored "news network" (http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/20/6049007/snapchat-discovery... b/c the original article is paywalled) is said to have advertising as well. No mention on how/if it's going to be targeted, but I wouldn't be surprised if they come up with something interesting.
what? and what all these photos tell about the users if not their interests and personal details?! :)
Can twitter turn a bunch of garbage impressions into cash? Yes.
Can snapchat turn a bunch of garbage impressions into cash?
Indeed, much of their expenses are for trying to grow as fast as possible, and cutting those could leave the potential for profit - but the entire premise of companies like this is that the potential earnings are unknown (but presumably high), thus they need to throw everything they have at it until they can find the kind of monetization they're looking for. I don't see it happening.
I wouldn't consider Facebook in the same group as Twitter/Snapchat.
Gary Vaynerchuck had an interesting point in one of his many many interviews. Basically SnapChat is instant focus, you cannot see an ad and file it away for later, you must act on it before it disappears. That functionality may be important to some advertisers.
Me I joined SnapChat and have never received one naked selfie so I never use the app. I guess that use for it created a lot of the user base. I do not know how much I would value the app because of that and how scalable their user base is, and their tech is easily replicated.
Do we know anything about the current growth of Snapchat? I thought the hype was over... turn out I'm probably wrong.