Is that a subtle hint saying you went to Harvard? 
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I have some nieces who use Snapchat. Nobody in my age group who I know use SC. So I am in a pickle here. How can I invest in Snap if I donāt use its productā¦ 
I guess I could ask my nieces if I can friend them? Gosh, is āfriendā even the right word here? But Iād feel like a dirty uncleā¦
Thatās precisely the success reason for snapchat: my wife and I (both engineers) tried to use snapchat and failed 4 times (installed, tried it, uninstalled). I watched my niece use it for the first time, they were able to post photos almost immediately. Itās when I realized:
- oh shit Iām too old to understand the new product.
- when my nieceās generation start to get old (say 5~10 yrs from now), snapchat will have to launch a completely different product to grasp the next generation.
The trouble is, Snap is much like Apple with Jobs: they rely on the founder for every decision, and the founder makes decisions with his gut feeling, disregarding experimental data. Hopefully heās the next Jobs. Otherwise theyāre f**ked when he turns 30 (4 yrs left).
I donāt know why he chose to locate the HQ in SoCal. But it turns out to be a genius idea. It set them outside of the Valley group think. I think Amazon also benefits by being in Seattle instead of the Valley. Both Amazon and Snapchatās moves are really unorthodox.
Snap is no longer just about the chat, at least thatās what they signal to the outside world with the name change. So maybe they want to expand beyond the under-30 market. Itās interesting to see if Instagram manages to steal some of Snapās magic.
Facebook is really strong in traditional engineering. Its management is top tier. I say itās way better than even Googleās. But I donāt see it as very creative. Snap is kind of like an offbeat artist. Very creative, but at times chaotic and not good at money management. Very interesting rivalry.
If you think twitter is bad, snap chatās UI is horrible. Iām pretty sure itās the result of a hackathon for worst UI. Snap chat is basically a group texting app with pics and video that works cross platform. That doesnāt appeal to much outside millenials who think everything they are doing is the most important thing ever. Millenials are the largest generation though.
@hanera No one uses Siri for anything serious. Itās horrible. Amazonās Alexa is much better. They really dropped the ball on the fire phone. I bet theyāll give it another go at some point with Alexa being a key differentiating feature.
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The opposite of Snap is Slack. That oneās value should be obvious to many. The latest round pegs it at 3.8B.
Facebook just released its Workplace product targeted at private messages within a company. Why did it take so long for FB to release Work? If my memory serves Facebook itself have been using it internally forever, way before Slack came around and became the cool kid on the block. Thatās rare strategic error on FBās part I think.
But I still like Facebookās chance better than Slackās. Itās like Facebook vs Twitter in a sense. Slack is more geared towards the power user type, while Facebookās Workplace is for the masses. Also, I often wonder if Workplace is FBās trojan horse to get it inside Chinaās Great Firewall?
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Reach of the slack is somewhat limited. As powerful as it is in terms of integration, it is a lot geared towards techies. A lot of non-techies lost on non-threaded messages. For FB, their strength is speed. They were in beta for over a year to work out on low bandwidth situation and they have really nice video / audio solution where others are missing. I see bright future in FB Workplace in enterprise social network. Yammer tried it with some success and huge money to be made there. I am curious to see the numbers in their next earning call.
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I think focusing on business is nice but itās not where the money is. 70% of our economy is consumers. Enterprise software spending is maybe 3%.
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Haha no, there were a handful of other schools that FB made available to back in 2004.
Slack is a glorified version of Hipchat (acquired by Atlassian). To this day I donāt understand why Slack became so popular, Hipchat has been around long before Slack was even born. Do the extra colors and emoticons matter that much to people??
IMO, Slack is much snappier than Hipchat, but I think what win over is Slack provided tons of integrations with other external tools and make it fun environment to do so. And of course who doesnāt like giphy and emoji 
Please, people, use more emoji! 
Twitterās Troubles and Snapās Appeal: Itās All About the Mojo
Snap Builds Engineering Team in San Francisco
I donāt have a subscription. Anybody does? So @notabene is right on. Any insider info? 
Not that I have any, but not sure how insider info would be useful for private companies. 
Knowing the engineering talent they acquired though, theyāll do good. Based purely on eng, Iād rate them higher than Airbnb or even Uber.
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Snap CEO is smart, wonder how far he can bring the company forward.
Just needed some HTML skill to get rid of their marketing popup:
Snap is for the first time hiring engineers in San Francisco, partly in an effort to strengthen its capabilities in search.
Since the summer, the newly renamed parent company of Snapchat has hired fewer than a dozen engineers who are working out of a small office in North Beach. Among the most prominent is Wisam Dakka, a longtime search engineering manager at Google, a Snap representative said. Mr. Dakka couldnāt be reached for comment.
At Google, Mr. Dakka worked with well-known Google search engineer Alex Grushetsky to boost Googleās search-results rankings by using machine learning, says a person who worked with them at Google. Mr. Dakkaās exit is a rare high level defection from Googleās search team
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Interestingā¦ why is Snap hiring a search guy?? Now I really need to use Snapchat.
Higher than Uber? Wow.
One thing I wonder is how they divide the tasks among the 3 teams in Venice Beach, SF and Seattle. Who does what? I donāt usually this kind of remote site set up. People work better shoulder to shoulder on the same table.
Why would anyone NOT need a search guy? Snapchat has this twitter-like video feed that you can browse / subscribe to. Those are all search problems.