How Long Until Facebook Wins?

You’re probably aware that Snap, Inc., the company behind Snapchat, is filing for an IPO. You might be aware of the volatile time this comes at, with Instagram stories knocking a large portion of the Snapchat’s user growth—despite it being a direct copy of one of the apps core features. You might even be aware of Facebook’s most recent attempt to crush its largest rival.

Obviously, innovation is dead. Evan Spiegel’s, the Founder & current CEO of Snap, Inc., fiancé certainly seems to think so. Miranda Kerr, in an interview with the Sunday Times[Paywall], roasted Facebook and its continued saga against her fiancé’s app.

The specific excerpt from her interview:

“‘I cannot STAND Facebook,’ she volunteers. She is not on Facebook itself, but she does have ten million followers on Instagram, which is owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s company. Instagram recently introduced a range of Snapchat-esque features, which has drawn out her protective streak.

”‘Can they not be innovative? Do they have to steal all of my partner’s ideas? I’m so appalled by that. … When you directly copy someone, that’s not innovation.’ And then a sudden look of panic crosses her face. ‘Do I get to approve this interview? Crystal!’ She admonishes her publicist who long ago drifted out of the conversation. ‘Oh I don’t even care. It’s a disgrace. How do they sleep at night?’“

I’m hard-pressed to believe that Kerr’s opinion will sway the great battle between Snapchat & Facebook’s massive empires, which only seems to grow every day. Spiegel may stay quite on the matter, he’s a private person, but Zuckerberg’s company has never been shy at its attempts to kill, or at least seriously compete with its younger competitor.

Facebook tried and failed twice to replicate Snapchat’s disappearing photos product. (It also famously tried to buy Spiegel’s startup for $3 billion back in late 2012.) Both Twitter and Instagram replicated the Snapchat Stories format but to little effect.
- Kurt Wagner, Recode

Despite these multiple attempts, and even these most recent semi-successful blows against their competitor, nothing substantial has arisen from this heated battle. How long can that last?

You can’t keep a plant alive with just sunlight. You can illuminate a plant in any way. Frame it perfectly against the sun, and cover it with as much garnish as possible—then you’ll have a perfect Insta shot.
But despite your best efforts, over time it will wilt. It will transform, leaving you with something dead from the roots up. Some of the most grand trees stand long after they die, held up by years of structure and development, wit and evolutionary cunning. They’re still dead.

Much like water, finance is the lifeblood of any well crafted tech company—alongside passion and a disregard for common sense. A startup is like a beautiful, but delicate, flower. The lily hanging from the tree that requires the precise amount of sun, water, and nutrients to maintain life. Too much, and it will die. Too little, and it will die. Leave it in the perfect conditions, and it still might die.
Companies like Facebook are the trees from which these flowers grow. Stealing nutrients missed by the giant, they too can grow into massive user ecosystems, with the power to shift the flow of the world at command.

Snapchat is still a flower, albeit a stupendously large one. It thrives off of its audience. Dominating a market built on the desire of inter-friend sociability. But what Snapchat has in popularity, it lacks in marketability. Being a predominately inter-social app, Snapchat has left itself without many opportunities to advertise, excluding its discover tab, which appears to be like a trough of cocaine to advertisers.

Spiegel might be the Picasso of social media, but his creation is built on the dependency to maintain relevant, something as difficult as holding back a river with your bare hands. It only takes a moment for you to loose hold, and never be able to grab back on again.

Snap’s got its discover feed and, my personal favorite, in-story ads. As more people flock from Snapchat to Instagram, which—in my opinion—actually did end up making a better stories feature, how will they make profits in the future? Snap is a camera company. They have hardware, software, socialware, and the genius of Evan Spiegel at their backs, but even as the company evolves in its quest after relevancy, one must ask how long until Facebook is finally able to land a hit?

The world’s largest social network, at the crest of passing two billion monthly-active users, is much more suited for war than any fresh IPO.
I’ve said it a lot, but Instagram. I’ll say it now, discoverability.
Maybe that’s what Snap needs?

Facebook Will Win The battle Against Snapchat, But They Will Loose The War Against Snap

Snap, Inc., The Future of Living?

One of the most sourced articles I used when writing this story, a piece on Recode, is something that I must recommend. It paints a picture of the real Snap. Not a company of interconnected individuals, but the empire of Evan Spiegel.

Recode:

"When you go to work at Snapchat you go to work for Evan,” said one source who has known Spiegel for years. “You don’t go to teach Evan. You don’t go to show him the ropes.”

Where Facebook can, and will dominate social—if only through sheer force of will—Snap will dominate communication. We’re public creatures, but private in nature. We want to communicate at times with the world, but for the most part our own little groups of friends is enough.

I imagine a future where Snapchat becomes only a piece of the intricate puzzle Snap will craft out of our lives. Innovatively crossing genres in film, and sharing our immediate lives. An architecture of systems for products across categories to communicate while still salvaging our property. Snap will become the engine of the social sharing market, powering brands, and individuals, while subversively undermining more established “trees”, leaving room for its theoretical many product categories to spread and initiate a global form of communication.

Spectacles is our first look at this vision. A camera for every moment, I can only imagine that Snap will shrink the form-factor of this product with every iteration, while maintaining the fun nature that keeps it not creepy.

From there, I can only imagine that Snap will simply build something unimaginable. No one predicted Spectacles, and I’m not sure anyone will be able to guess what creation Spiegel will push through next. We may see a bigger dive into software, interconnecting devices and our cameras to become the home of a vast library of user generated content and entertainment factors that can only prove lucrative.

Maybe we’ll end up seeing more hardware? An actually entertaining smart watch? Even something as simple as revamping the current Snapchat app, or by producing an entirely new camera app, designed to improve the quality of photos and videos, whilst allowing the user greater content sharability, would be a sensible, and completely reasonable, jump for the company.

I can’t imagine what Snap will do next; not yet. We’ll have to see what happens. All I know is that if I get a chance, I’m buying Snap stock.