Meanwhile snapchat pushed for weird tv shows and sponsored and featured stories, pushing friend stories to the tiny row on top. It's like they do it on purpose to alienate users in exchange for short time increase in "engagement".

Such an odd decision... they had an app for private communication (the value prop was "you can be yourself when your parents and boss aren't in the audience") and tacked on the supermarket tabloids and celebrity news.

> the value prop was "you can be yourself when your parents and boss aren't in the audience"

If that's the value prop, what were people willing to pay for that value?

I think, instead, getting sponsored stories in front of eyeballs is the service being provided to the paying customers.

I'm glad Snap figured out a way to profitability (and what do I know as an outsider looking in), but they don't have as much good demographic info as say Facebook, so they can't for instance show men's shaving ads to men only, which I recall made their sponsored stories very "most common denominator". I no longer use Snapchat and I used to be a daily user maybe 4 years ago.

These sorts of metrics are interesting to investors at a quarterly timescale.

Understanding these phenomena is easier when you think of it solely in terms of the bottom line.