Facebook is a panopticon with a massive dataset on each user, and has a pretty substantial moat by way of users 'punishing' each other for leaving, among other competitive advantages.
Snapchat is a trendy app that could easily become uncool, and when it does, I don't see how users feel much of a penalty for leaving in the same way FB users do.
I think it's because you might lose contact with people if you don't have a FB profile.
If you're not on FB and don't interact with your 'friends' frequently, people kinda forget you exist and stop talking to you, and friendships wither. Even geographically close friendships.
For the record, I have never used FB. I hated it from go.
I also can't point to any real studies; all I've got is anecdata, much like your personal experience.
That said, I have heard from multiple people variations on trying to quit or use it less, and getting grief from family and friends for not taking part. And I personally get passive-agressive commentary from my family for refusing to take part - "What did you think of - oh, that's right, you never saw [cousin]'s baby pictures because of your Facebook thing."
That is excellent for you. But you are not the world. I interact with people I'd label as "friends" where Facebook (or Facebook Messenger for some) is the only avenue I have for that interaction.
And for some, it's the only avenue I'd want to use.
I never said I was the world, but please take my statements in the context of close personal relationships.
If ones requirement is to maintain acquaintances, then fine. However, I was disputing the parent comment's assertion that leaving FB is akin to a punishment.
FB has four massive "empires": FB, Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram. They haven't monetized Whatsapp or Messenger much - maybe they never can, but for now that's potential opportunity. They have a strong grasp on their massive market share. They still have more monetizing to do on Instagram, which is already doing well financially. IG alone is worth more than Snapchat. FB has a lot of cash and keeps piling it on too. They were always profitable and raised a ton more than Snap, including the money they didn't lose by pricing the IPO at just the right price. Only hurt them for a short time.
FB has more immediate ways to expand too, most likely. We already saw them transition from relying on getting a cut of things like plugins and games in FB to that not mattering at all. They could try to go into payments more, maybe an Adsense alternative -- likely the only company capable of doing so too. Yahoo failed at doing it a decade ago and any other company has always been much more niche with much more worse payouts.
Facebook has been profitable each fiscal year they've been public. Their first full year public they produced $1.5 billion in net income.
Facebook is tracking to a ~31 PE ratio for fiscal 2017, with a growth rate that is still high.
$14 billion in net income (fiscal 2017 speculative), is a lot more important as a metric than $200 per user. If they push that net income up to $30 billion over the next four or five years (very plausible), at 24 times earnings (at that point, speculating on a $720b market cap), maybe their per user climbs to $300+ - it still won't matter, the net income is what will matter.
Snapchat doesn't possess any of the positive financial qualities that Facebook had, to square against the high per user value.
Facebook grew so much, almost everyone has it and its use cases are versatile (and therefore the data collected). Snapchat is really just used by younger folks with almost no financial power for chatting in the weirdest way.
Like nick, I'm close to 30 years old too. Snap is big in all my social circles. Mostly people between mid 20s to early 30s. Less popular the older you get, but still significant. Regardless, all have enough buying power.
Even if Snap never gets much traction past people in their 30s, that's enough of a market to expand for quite a while. The 18-34 demographic is the most coveted. The pre-teen and teen market isn't something to completely sneeze at either.
Of course. But getting popular is an important part of being a big social media company. Profits of $100M on under $1B in revenue isn't going to help things much for Snap if that's not growing because they don't have enough users.
Anecdotal: I, and a large chunk of my friends and acquaintances use snapchat regularly. We're 30 year olds making good money. In the same way that some messages are best suited for a text message, some for an email, and some for a phone call, there are some messages where snapchat is the best medium.
that's not the appeal. Snapchat is coveted by it's users because of ephemerality. It grew in reaction to your parents being on fb; in reaction to public, permanent social communication. The users love it because they think it's more authentic - that they're not rehearsing for a contrived selfie or food porn. It's cool cuz they're shooting the shit and not going for likes, and no one outside their sphere is gonna see it.
Everything you said other than ephemerality applies to every other messaging platform, including Facebook Messenger. How does ephemerality help you shoot the shit better than a text message?
I believe FB messenger now has secret/disappearing messages as a response to snapchat, but before that it was a pretty clear distinction: if I send you a goofy selfie on snapchat it's gone in 10 seconds. If I send you a goofy selfie on messenger, you could always scroll up to see it again. And share it with others if you so choose.
It's psychological. As soon as you put something on FB, Twitter, etc. it's no longer "yours". Snapchat makes conversations and pictures disposable. It's just fast and ugly. And it powers the app by nudging by users into creating content to send to a friend without having to worry about rehearsing for the perfect picture/tweet/etc.
Also it's private. Facebook is mainly used by people with friends and family. Celebrities/notable figures rarely interact with others outside of Twitter. But even with Twitter, the interactions are permanent -- even when tweets are deleted.
On and it's great for sexting, which let's not kid ourselves, was the original appeal and still is for a lot of people in their target demographic.
Ya, you're not getting it. First, a transcript of your communication is not desirable to many (if you find this puzzling, it's because you're old :P). Second, FB Messenger or any chat client you have to manage the groups (forget it).
Facebook was having decent growth at the time. Snap is undergoing massive competition from both Instagram, WhatsApp AND Facebook. Personally don't believe in the stock. Perhaps at $5 to 7 a share I would buy in, but I'm not really seeing it.
None revenue, just users. Based off their MAUs, if Messenger was an independent chat app they would fetch such valuation. I peg them at $40/user, which isn't so crazy considering WhatsApp was purchased at $35/user and Instagram at $30/user. When Facebook Messenger gets around to copying WeChat (the whole payments and official accounts ecosystem) I expect them to rake in merchant fees for big profit.
Speaking of FB Messenger/WhatsApp getting around to copying WeChat, what's taking them so long? Are the US, or non-China, markets simply not ready to embrace a WeChat style all encompassing app?
Full disclosure, I've never used either FB Messenger or WeChat, but I do use WhatsApp, so I'm just basing this on what I hear.
I think it just takes a long time. Messenger is already trying to emulate WeChat, they are just not there yet. I believe Messenger is the only app in the world that's positioned to match WeChat's ecosystem. They've been copying WeChat over the past few years. They copied the voice message feature (very popular in china), QR contact scanning, Games, Mini-apps (Messenger bots), and Wallet (Facebook Pay). Other features that come to mind are stickers/sticker packs and "stories", although those were copied from several companies at once.
On market opposition, I think the biggest obstacle are the payment vendors, specifically Visa and Mastercard. Alipay and WeChat wallet had an easy time taking off because they weren't competing against credit cards. Visa makes so much money in its present rent-seeking market position they have no incentive to innovate.
Instagram and WhatsApp have been acquired to a great extent in order to eliminate competition. That more or less justified their acquisition price -- it was cheaper to buy them than to compete. Messenger is a different story.
