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Comment by tw1010 | Hacker News Reader

I just have this feeling a lot of anti-snapchat news or comments are either biased as a function of investing in competing companies, or is a consequence of having their head way too far up the adult, linkedin, world to know what is really going on with the people that use these apps. The fact is that the vast vast vast majority of young people look way down on facebook, and only use it because of network effect hooks (which have proven to be surprisingly robust, but I don't have much faith in long-term), whereas snapchat is totally considered cool and fun to use. This sign should be far more than enough, to anyone who knows the history of these services, to know how all this will turn out long-term.

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In the UK at least the teens I know consider snapchat uncool and hard to use; they prefer to use Instagram. When I travel to India and the far East (Indonesia and the Philippines most recently) people seem to be all about WhatsApp. Obviously a small sample and the plural of anecdote isn't data, but you don't quote sources for your "vast vast vast majority of young people" either.

Which is to say: network effects are king and people will use what their social contacts already use in essentially all cases. I think that argues strongly against Snapchat as a growth bet, given the numbers in the article.

Yes, I really like Snapchat's app, it takes some time getting used to the UI but I found the heat map to be a killer feature, pound for pound I find it better than Instagram(still, I think they would benefit by copying Instagram rolling non-ephemeral pictures feed).

However, I don't use Snapchat because none of my friends do, I've met some Americans traveling who use it and that is all, I think a lot of people don't even know what Snapchat is while everyone knows what Instagram is even if they don't use it, that is all because of network effects.

Instagram has caught way up to Snapchat with kids IMO. Millennials aren't looking down on Instagram the same way they look down on Facebook, although I do see the potential as long as Instagram keeps messing around with the timelines and practicing the crude art of withholding likes and comments from users in order to get them to check back more often.

One thing I really, really like about what Snapchat is trying to do is go against what makes them money in order to make their user base happier. Separating Friends and Discover is bad for cash but good for customer experience. If they can keep my friends' snaps and advertisers' snaps entirely separated I would happily start snapping more.

As it is, I can't watch my friends' stories on either app without being forced through ads and I find it incredibly annoying.

The answer to this article's headline is, hopefully, "a fun place where I can share photos with my friends and not see an ad."

> Instagram has caught way up to Snapchat with kids IMO. Millennials aren't looking down on Instagram the same way they look down on Facebook

I'd hesitate to call Millennials 'kids' at this point. Hell, Millennial poster-person extraordinaire Lena Dunham is in her 30s.

> ... with kids IMO.

> Millennials aren't looking down ...

pst, youngest millennials 18 now days[0], oldest 37.

So some of them get upset to get lumped with generation z[1] as kids. Other old enough to not care anymore.

btw, get of my lawn.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Z

Snapchat is competing with Instagram, not FB. And while IG belongs to FB, I don't think most people see it that way. And the numbers for both services seem to confirm that IG is eating Snap's lunch. With limited income and stalled user growth, they risk finding themselves in a worse situation than Twitter. The latter at least doesn't have FB coming after them.

I still don't understand why people see them as mutually exclusive apps. While stories is in competition, the rest of both apps, the primary use of both, are completely different in practice. Instagram has taken over the role of Facebook for young people, and Snapchat is the messaging service. Most high schoolers I know through younger siblings of friends, etc, use both. Stories still lean Snapchat for those younger ones. YMMV.

If teens love Snapchat and are loyal to it beyond their teenager years (ie, what it would take for this to turn out well long-term), why aren't their user numbers growing? Each year, they should take in another cohort of new smartphone users and hold onto their cohort of existing former-teens.

(And, to clear myself of the charge that I am invested in other platforms: I have neither a financial investment in, nor am I a user of, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or any broadly similar product. I do use Whatsapp, very minimally.)

Snapchat is primarily used in the US, Canada, etc.

In the US, there are 23.8M children aged 12-17. If we average it out and assume that every year when a kid turns 13 they start using Snapchat, that's only 4M users a year. Given their growth of users is higher per quarter than that, they very well could be growing from exactly this source.

Just because they aren't growing at the same rate doesn't mean they aren't growing. In fact, if we expect the model you suggested, it seems that their growth rate will continue to slow as they accumulate more users but the birth rate of wealthy countries (primary users of Snapchat) stays at the levels expected. Even though the birth rate is increasing, I don't think it will as much as the percentage of users of Snapchat increases.

https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp

Anything limited to a generation doesn't last long, unless everyone of the same age in subsequent generations also pick it up.

At some point the generation using Snapchat will realize that all the experiences they've been sharing have actually been going into the trash. Snapchat will then either become Instagram, or pivot, or die.

I keep hearing this argument but with nothing more than anecdotal evidence. I'm curios to know if there's any survey data backing this up (and considering also international markets, perhaps).

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