Analyst Rich Greenfield: Snap Needs More Than Users to Survive
*By Conor White*
Snap's mixed bag on earnings points to a murky future for the Snapchat app, which may hold more promise as a messaging platform than the ad-supported content powerhouse many people expected it to be, said BTIG's media and tech analyst, Rich Greenfield.
"I think the challenge is more and more time spent feels like it's shifting to communications and away from content," Greenfield said Wednesday in an interview with Cheddar. "So their core use case is very sticky for the entire generation that uses it as their iMessage, essentially."
Optimistic investors may be heartened by Snap's revenue beat in the second quarter, but Greenfield said numbers from the company's earnings report on Tuesday are nothing to celebrate.
"I've never cut my target for a company in terms of revenues by 50 percent over a 14-month period," Greenfield said. "We thought when this company went public they would do $2.5 billion in revenue this year, they're struggling to get to the $1.1, $1.2 \[billion\] revenue this year. "
The analyst said it isn't enough to have millions of people using Snapchat as a messaging platform, since "filters don't make billions of dollars," he said.
Content is still key to Snap's future as a business, Greenfield said.
"They've got to convince people, to make this a multi-billion dollar business, they need people to spend a lot of time on the right side of the app, consuming content."
For more on this story, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/snap-loses-daily-active-users-for-first-time-ever).
From moving finances online to the new ways we'll be getting cash, Ray Hatch, the Vice President of Enterprise Solutions Vertical Markets at Comcast Business explains how the banking industry is getting ready for the future.
The head of Russia's space agency said Monday that the Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the moon after its engines failed to shut down correctly, and he blamed the country's decades-long pause in lunar exploration for the mishap.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused Facebook on Monday of putting profits over people’s safety during the emergencies created by Canada’s record wildfire season.
Jeffrey Yin, chief financial officer of Artsy, and artist Trevor Paglen explained how AI is expanding the tools that can be used to add new depth to the industry.
Mastercards's Chief Technology Officer Ed McLaughlin shows Cheddar News Senior Reporter Michelle Castillo what shoppers can expect in shopping technology.
Almost a week after the Apple faithful collectively gasped at the first evidence that the iPhone’s red “end call” button might soon be vacating its center position to take up residence one column to the right, it looks like it might have been mostly a false alarm.
Meta is under scrutiny for the way it has moderated reproductive health content. Women's health advocates say the social media giant has allowed male health content to flow more freely than content geared toward women and gender diversity.
