Snapchat CEO's Leaked Memo On Survival (techcrunch.com) 71
In a 6,000-word leaked memo to Cheddar's Alex Heath, Snapchat's CEO Evan Spiegel attempts to revive employee morale with philosophy, tactics and contrition as Snap's share price sinks to an all-time low of around $8 -- half its IPO price and a third of its peak. TechCrunch reports: "The biggest mistake we made with our redesign was compromising our core product value of being the fastest way to communicate," Spiegel stresses throughout the memo regarding "Project Cheetah." It's the chat that made Snapchat special, and burying it within a combined feed with Stories and failing to build a quick-loading Android app have had disastrous consequences. Spiegel shows great maturity here, admitting to impatient strategic moves and outlining a cohesive path forward. There's no talk of Snapchat ruling the social app world here. He seems to understand that's likely out of reach in the face of Instagram's competitive onslaught. Instead, Snapchat is satisfied if it can help us express ourselves while finally reaching even meager profitability.
Snapchat may be too perceived as a toy to win enough adults, too late to win back international markets from the Facebook empire and too copyable by good-enough alternatives to grow truly massive. But if Snap can follow the Spiegel game plan, it could carve out a sustainable market through a small but loyal audience who want to communicate through imagery. The report goes on to highlight nine of the most interesting takeaways from the memo and why they're important. They include: "Apologizing for rushing the redesign; Chat is king; Snapchat must beat Facebook as best friends; Discover soars as Facebook Watch and IGTV stumble; But Discover is a mess; Aging up to earn money; Finally prioritizing developing markets; Fresh ideas, separate apps; and The freedom of profitability.
Snapchat may be too perceived as a toy to win enough adults, too late to win back international markets from the Facebook empire and too copyable by good-enough alternatives to grow truly massive. But if Snap can follow the Spiegel game plan, it could carve out a sustainable market through a small but loyal audience who want to communicate through imagery. The report goes on to highlight nine of the most interesting takeaways from the memo and why they're important. They include: "Apologizing for rushing the redesign; Chat is king; Snapchat must beat Facebook as best friends; Discover soars as Facebook Watch and IGTV stumble; But Discover is a mess; Aging up to earn money; Finally prioritizing developing markets; Fresh ideas, separate apps; and The freedom of profitability.
Last one through the door apparently (Score:3)
The CEO is just now realizing this?
Re:Last one through the door apparently (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, pretty much everyone here predicted their big new overhaul was going to be a disaster. It was an easy prediction to make, since a) it involved UX folks, who always seem gung-ho to radically change stuff, and b) most people hate change.
Re: (Score:3)
So Snapchat is to Instagram as Digg is to Reddit?
Re: (Score:1)
So Snapchat is to Instagram as Slashdot is to Reddit?
FTFY - Digg, seriously?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Nope. Digg was far more popular than Slashdot in its prime, and undoubtedly what Reddit ripped off.
Slashdot is a relic from before those times (aka 'the late 90s').
We're still here, though...
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
So Snapchat is to Instagram as Slashdot is to Reddit?
FTFY - Digg, seriously?
Slashdot is more like IRC. Not as popular as anything else anymore, but will probably outlive them all. How many things have started, risen, peaked and vanished while slashdot hsa just trucked on regardless?
I mean sure it's been not as good as the old days since before the introduction of user names. The depth on specific topics is often not as much as on very much special interest forums. But I have yet to find a better place for
Re: (Score:2)
When was it based just on user numbers?
I have a low 5 digit user number and I'm pretty sure I signed up for Slashdot at some point in the 1990s and I don't remember it being user number based unless that was a very short period before I signed up.
I think Slashdot's moderation scheme is part of what helps it and the inline threading of comments, which is very USENET-like.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Last one through the door apparently (Score:5, Insightful)
What is it with these websites pushing through terrible "redesigns"?
They get pages and pages of user hatred, and yet these CEO's seem to blindly trust these UI "Experts" anyway? Here's a hint - if your UI Expert says "Users don't know what they want; they will stick with it - they did with Youtube" - fire them. Users stuck with Youtube despite the UI changes (Youtube was heavily entrenched) - not because of them.
Reddit is going through a similar thing now - redesigns that appear to have been implemented by people who have no idea what the site is about, who it is for, and how it is used - it is almost as if they are designing to a hipster tablet template (oh right, it is because that is what they are doing).
At least Slashdot had the brains to dump Beta (at least I haven't seen it in years despite almost never logging in)
Or - and it just occured to me - is it some kind of monetization experiment all of these sites are pushing through? (it all makes sense)
Re: (Score:3)
Or - and it just occured to me - is it some kind of monetization experiment all of these sites are pushing through? (it all makes sense)
These "redesign" appears when you've got a some "executive" having difficulty justifying the cost of his empire, or when an executive started building his empire in the company.
The usual pattern is to make up some "crisis" or "bold move" that required sinking in a lot of company money, then hiring a whole lot of people (or moving people from other parts of the company) under his reporting structure. That gave the executive a huge budget to spend, lots of power to abuse, and justification for his own big bo
Re: (Score:2)
What is it with these websites pushing through terrible "redesigns"?
I think they all believe the only way to grow their userbase is to make themselves "hip" by changing their appearance to a "fresh new look". The obvious problem is their existing userbase is used to the old design (and features) and have learned to navigate it efficiently at that point. Change is generally what they don't want, at least not the kind of change that the company management wants to make. If you annoy the current users they might start leaving and you could ultimately end up with a net shrinkag
Re:Last one through the door apparently (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience, UI and UX people have no idea how to do either. They just follow the industry trend (flat colors! no differentiation between text and links/actions! moar whitespace!! mobile-first!!!) regardless of any feedback. They are highly qualified User Experience Experts; nobody without a selection of colored pens and a boutique haircut is allowed to have an opinion on their work.
Some of the clever ones then use extremely stupid metrics to back up their design failures: "time on site is up 25%" (because users can't find/do what they want quickly), "user engagement is up" (people are clicking on more things, or scrolling past infinite lists of things, trying to find what they were looking for) "support tickets are down" (because you hid the support button behind a maze of ambiguous links).
Unfortunately we've passed into an age where form is more important than function. It doesn't matter if it works or not, so long as it's pretty.
Re: (Score:2)
Or they come up with shit like A/B testing, which is fuck all use when the correct answer is more like Z or something from the Futhark.
Re: (Score:2)
If somebody doesn't do usability testing, and claims to be a UI expert, those are the people you should fire. Human computer action is a real science, and treating pretenders like engineers doesn't get you down the right path.
The better question is why does the c-suite put up with departments of people who have no credentials? Well I guess the answer is the ones who do will quickly go out of business, leaving the smart ones to earn the profits.
Re: (Score:2)
Usability testing's where you show them two static screenshots in slightly different shades of pale grey and ask them which they prefer, isn't it?
Proper HCI is to UX as architecture is to interior design.
Re: (Score:2)
Or - and it just occured to me - is it some kind of monetization experiment all of these sites are pushing through?
In a word... yes. Just look at what is actually different between old reddit and new reddit. The old design had one ad per page, and it was always at the top where it was easy to ignore. The new design has 2-5 inline ads per page that look more like user-submitted links.
Re: (Score:2)
The Slashdot Beta 1-week Boycott really did work! I heavily participated in it.
I do miss www.pipedot.org, tho :( Dead as a door-knob since early 2017.
Re: (Score:2)
UI designers have to keep redesigning the UI to justify their own existence, otherwise they're out of a job.
Re: (Score:2)
The CEO is just now realizing this?
No shit, when one is surrounded by yes-man and sycophants, one quickly lose touch with reality.
Leaked Memo Eh? (Score:3)
Perhaps he should've sent the memo through some kind of service that automatically self-destructs messages once they are read, maybe on some kind of timer. Someone ought to suggest that idea to him.
Re:Leaked Memo Eh? (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps Banksy could help with that.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps Banksy could help with that.
Actually, I think your comment is Insightful. Snapchat needs to "Banksy" their new UI . . . run it through the shredder . . . and go back to the old one. Kinda sorta like what Coke did with "New Coke" back to "Classic Coke".
Sometimes new code needs to be "MacGyver'ed" to fit in with existing code.
Sometimes new code just plain needs to be "Banksy'ed".
. . . and someone paid a lot of money for the Banksy work . . . only for it to be put through the shredder.
This sounds like a lot of software projects I
Re: (Score:2)
Why would you think he didn't want the memo to leak. This isn't a surprising memo with secrets. It leaking is good for him and the Snapchat company.
Re: (Score:2)
While broadly disseminated memos to employees and "all hands meetings" may be officially company secrets, as a practical matter it will eventually get to the public, and any CEO who acts/believes otherwise is inviting negative scrutiny, including from the SEC.
Re: (Score:2)
Surely there is a way to do very small betas and get useful feedback, rather than roll the dice on a big release. That Microsoft effs up is almost forgivable. That a company like Snapchat does I just do not see the excuse. Snapchat has so very little to offer its customers except convenience and user satisfaction.
Re: (Score:2)
Until you go to let out the winner, but the loser was faking and tackles you to the ground while the winner stabs you to death.
Social software trends (Score:5, Interesting)
We have reached an interesting point in computing history, where software trends are socially driven. In the past software was for function (balancing the checkbook, word processing, business, education), or entertainment (games, consuming information). Games in and of themselves tend to be trends, like other forms of entertainment such as movies. People play the game until they "beat" it or become bored of it, new games that are (supposedly) better in some way or another come along, people then play those games.
Social software is different, in that the software itself isn't the focus, but the connectivity it provides socially. The quality (or lack thereof) of the software has no impact on its popularity - as long as the software is basically functional and usable. Do you think that one single Facebook user chose to be on Facebook because of the features of their software? Of course not.
Snapchat had one major draw that really kickstarted it. Supposedly, the messages weren't saved and went away after a brief amount of time. That was right around the time there were several high profile cases of high school students getting in trouble for sending pictures / messages that were inappropriate to one another using FB Messenger and texting. Snapchat seemed like a solution to that, so youth adopted it as a way of having privacy among themselves. The other thing it had going for it was that it *wasn't* FB, and their parents (especially the moms) were totally embracing FB. Typical youth to do something different than their parents just to be different.
Snapchat's days are numbered. As are Facebook's (although FB has the money and a more generic, all-encompassing platform so it will hang on for several more years). The social software generations are vastly shorter than human generations, as indicated by massive trends that have already come and gone (Myspace, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, etc). It's safe to say that within the next three years something will come along that will be the end of Snapchat. Whenever your platform is based on the "anti" anything (doesn't matter if we're talking about styles of music or clothing or software), the days are numbered until the whims of people change again.
Re: (Score:2)
Meanwhile people on the chans can watch a live video feed of a flag against a blue sky and within a day locate it and vandalize it.