Snapchat is Maturing – Page 3

Narrative: Snapchat is Maturing

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Snap Acquired Mapping App Zenly in May for a Reported $250-350m (Jun 22, 2017)

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Mapping

Snapchat is Maturing

Time Warner Signs $100m Deal to Develop Shows for Snapchat (Jun 19, 2017)

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Snapchat is Struggling to Grow Partly Because Evan Spiegel Trusts Gut Over Data (May 24, 2017)

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Snapchat Debuts Sponsored Filters For the Rear-Facing Camera (May 15, 2017)

When Facebook announced its AR strategy at F8 a few weeks back, a key component was filters for the rear-facing camera. At least in demos, those filters looked more impressive than what Snapchat had until then offered for the back camera on a phone, interacting in sophisticated ways with real-world elements in much the way Snapchat’s selfie filters do with faces. But the other big difference between Facebook and Snapchat’s approaches to filters is that for now at least Facebook treats them as an open developer platform, while at Snapchat they’re first-party only other than for advertisers. And today Snapchat announced that it will be debuting its first sponsored rear-facing filters, starting with a promotion for a teen romance movie. That’s clearly a new place for Snapchat to put ads within its interface, which will be handy as its user growth continues to be slow. But it also means that Snapchat’s rear-facing filters will continue to be a very narrow, curated experience with the occasional ad, while Facebook’s equivalent may in time offer a much richer, broader set of filters for the rear-facing camera. I would guess that Facebook will in time offer monetization options for developers too (and therefore take a cut) but for now the business models remain quite different, which means that even though from a feature perspective the two will compete, Facebook won’t be offering brands equivalent ad products to the ones Snapchat offers.

via Bloomberg

Snap

Snapchat is Maturing

★ Snap Inc Reports More Slow User Growth, Growing Losses, Minimal Spectacles Sales (May 10, 2017)

Snap, owner of the Snapchat app, today reported its first earnings as a public company, and it was a somewhat unique experience. Its press release, linked below, is entirely devoid of commentary, and although its call had a little more of that in prepared remarks, it was mostly focused on its evolving ad products. The results themselves are more of the same from the S-1 filing, which I suggested at the time was lousy preparation for an IPO because it featured significantly slowing user growth and a lack of clarity about the future. This first quarter of public earnings reinforces that perception, with more slower growth than last year. Massive stock-based compensation related to the IPO dramatically distorts the margin picture, but even stripping out SBC leaves a worsening margin picture as costs in several categories rose faster than revenue. Evan Spiegel and the other executives on the call seemed keener to talk trash about competitors, notably Facebook, than in really answering investors’ pressing questions about user growth, and that’s reflected in the stock price, which has dived since the release. The bombastic tone would have been justifiable if the company’s growth hadn’t slowed significantly since the introduction of Instagram Stories with no signs of recovery, but in the current context it feels like naivety or denial instead. Snap’s management argues that measures of engagement and “creation” are more important than user growth metrics. However, it provides very few of those, and then not consistently or with enough granularity to measure them over time. The conclusion from all of this is that Snap’s future is that of a niche company dominating narrow segments of the population rather than a company with broad mass market appeal, and that has significant implications for its valuation. Two other points worth making: the company provided enough data in today’s call to suggest it sold fewer than 100k Spectacles units since launch, confirming the perception that it’s been seen as an experiment than a meaningful new part of its business. Secondly, it continues to suggest that its sub-par Android app has hurt growth, and that recent improvements have moved the needle, though the numbers in question have moved so little that this isn’t going to turn around the growth trend.

via Snap Inc.

Snap

Snapchat is Maturing

Snapchat Adds Several New Features the Day Before its First Earnings Call (May 9, 2017)

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Snapchat is Maturing

Snapchat Opens Self-Service Ad Buying Tool for Smaller Businesses (May 4, 2017)

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Snapchat is Maturing

Snapchat Claims Unique Audiences Despite Facebook Growth (May 3, 2017)

Snapchat claims that it is still able to reach unique audiences despite Facebook’s rapid growth. That’s quite a claim since Facebook’s monthly active users now equate to two thirds of the entire US population and it reaches 52% of the US population daily. But app analytics firm App Annie has some numbers which suggest that Snapchat’s audience does include a chunk of users who aren’t active on Facebook or Instagram the same day. So Snapchat’s argument is really one about reaching a narrow base of users that can’t be reached another way, which is really an argument for Snapchat as a complementary ad platform rather than a core platform, given that the reach of both Facebook and Google is far wider. Snapchat’s reach at the end of last year was about one third of Facebook’s in the US, and far lower than that in most markets around the world, so it remains very much a niche play despite its success in a demographic that matters to advertisers.

via Bloomberg