Snapchat’s salvation: catching up with Silicon Valley giants through innovation | Technology

WAre some social networks successful and others struggling to survive? How did Facebook and Twitter go from being equals in the 2000s to almost even rivals 15 years later? Has it even come to this point? Since everyone seems to use social media, everyone seems to have an answer to these types of questions.

But social networks are an iceberg. Most of the important stuff is below the surface. Building a great user experience is critical to our efforts in this area. However, to really be successful, you need to master the parts that most people don’t see.

Snapchat doesn’t appreciate me calling the app “social media.” We are currently in the midst of an international advertising campaign encouraging people to use “.
Less social media, more Snapchat” and repositioned itself as a messaging service first and foremost, rather than the “social media popularity contest” of its competitors. This is in keeping with the overall tone the company has been promoting as the de facto largest independent US consumer app.

Snapchat is also one of the best examples of why focusing only on what users can see can cause companies to lose sight of what makes a service successful. After a pandemic-era boom, the company has been hit hard by the turmoil in the technology sector, with its stock falling from a high of $83 in October 2021 to just $8.15, less than a tenth of that in just a year. It was a stark sign that the company needed to rethink things, and in the years since, Snap has built products for advertisers, influencers, developers, and marketers that can compete with Facebook and Instagram. I’ve been working hard for this.

Last week, I spent time with Ronan Harris, the company’s president of EMEA, to discuss these changes. I wanted to know what a company of Snap’s size needs to focus on, and what mistakes people make when they only focus on the public-facing part.

“Our users say Snapchat is the happiest place they spend their time online,” Harris says. “I’d like to say it’s because we have magically happy technology. But I think it’s because it’s actually where they spend their time. [the] You can spend most of your online time with the people you care about in a way that feels authentic and real.”

This sense of connection fundamentally changes the nature of Snapchat’s business. While it’s easy to insert ads into an infinite, algorithmically-curated feed, it’s a little harder to do the same when users are sending and receiving messages. So Snapchat will have to work harder to stand still.

“What we’ve been doing from an advertising standpoint is figuring out how to incorporate native formats and native ads into those experiences without being offensive.” The nearly ubiquitous format, shamelessly replicated by people, has ads sprinkled throughout, so there’s space for traditional vertical video ads.

However, other options require more work. “When you open the app, your camera opens and you see a carousel of lenses at the bottom, where you experience sponsored lenses,” Harris says. “It’s not something that’s forced on you. You can choose to do it. The lenses are usually of high quality, so that’s what the majority of our community does.”

It doesn’t take much effort to tell advertisers to send you videos and links. Telling you that you need to build a custom augmented reality lens is a bit of a stretch. And Snapchat isn’t like that. “We take all of that pain away,” Harris explains. “We’ll work with you on the creative side. We have a network of providers who build the lenses, and we fund them, so as an advertiser you have a lot more control over the engagement you get on the platform. You just pay for the actual media spend.”

This is a surprising proposal. Because it goes against the stereotypes of big California tech companies. In California, due to our obsession with “scaling up” solutions, we rarely hear about jobs that involve human labor. But for spendthrifts, the rules are different. “When you’re spending money on advertising, unless you’re a small person, you’re answering the phone and you’re talking to a human being,” Harris said. Coca-Cola does more than just enter your credit card number into a web form to launch a multi-million dollar campaign. Even the world’s largest companies offer a friendly look and a firm handshake to seal a deal.

But part of Harris’ job is to make this customized service more accessible. The company now has a sophisticated toolset for small businesses, making it easier for mid-sized fashion startups and entrepreneurial influencers to bring in their own capital. “We were putting too many barriers in place when it came to usability and functionality on the front end. It wasn’t easy for small businesses. [a small and medium enterprise] It was important to understand what the opportunity was and how to execute on it. So we’ve done a huge amount of work. This drove 85% growth in that part of the business. ”

For example, if you’re trying to sell shoes on Snapchat, you can simply upload a still photo of them to the platform and use its tools to automatically create an augmented reality lens for users to “try on.” . When you put some money into your account and ask the company to target you, it automatically tries to make the most of your budget by focusing on the things you want to get the most out of.

For readers with a marketing background, nothing I’ve described will come as a shock. But that’s the point. These are business fundamentals, but they’re surprisingly difficult for social media platforms to get right. From the outside looking in, we don’t have answers to questions like “Why does Facebook have a monopoly?” I feel like they must be due to things that we as users experience, like network effects, ease of onboarding, or just plain ubiquity.

But one answer is that Facebook was one of the first companies to properly solve these problems. Meta’s advertising tools are powerful for everyone from your local takeout joint to major multinational corporations, and stopping inequality from widening further is a daunting task. It’s too early to tell whether efforts to shut down Snap will be successful. But like what’s seen on the phone, it’s what’s hidden from the public that will determine the company’s next decade.

Wider TechScape