Snapchap snaps back: Snapchat Snapbrats' Snapstats are Snapcrap

A former Snapchat employee has accused the selfie-slinging giant of illegally inflating its user numbers and misleading investors. Anthony Pompliano, a former Growth Lead, says that the photo and video streamer is providing false metrics to its advertisers and investors as parent company Snap Inc prepares its initial public …

[David Austin]

Who to believe?

Tough one - is this a disgruntled bad fit employee getting revenge, or is this a business still playing by start-up rules, and assuming you can fly by wire, the numbers don't matter, and eyeballs are everything?

Glad it isn't my job to call this one.

[Malcolm Weir]

Re: Who to believe?

The thing that smells fishy here is that the guy was fired after only three weeks. Taking the employer's side for a moment, even if the employee was incompetent, that seems awful quick and risky (to the employer), because you're supposed to warn and coach and generally make some kind of effort before terminating someone, and it's real hard to jump through those hoops in just three weeks.

Now, the employee could have thrown a tantrum and screamed threats at the management team, but even so, that would generally (in serious businesses) result in him being let go for "personality differences" (or some such) coupled with studiously neutral references (because, in actuality, if he is a prick, then having him work for a competitor sounds like a great idea).

(The only thing I know of that will almost always get you kicked in that sort of time are material falsehoods on your resume: claiming to have a degree when you don't, etc... but no-one sues over that stuff, because they'd never win).

[Sampler]

Re: Who to believe?

He's evidently incompetent if he believes a company that makes money from selling ads shouldn't be fudging its numbers higher, I mean, that's just standard industry practice, what is this loon playing at?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Who to believe?

After all, he never understood Facebook was 'managing' its stats as well....

[The Man Who Fell To Earth]

Re: Who to believe?

1. If you take Snapchat's version at face value, what they are claiming is that their executives hired Mr. Pompliano without properly vetting him.

2. If you take Snapchat's version at face value, those same executives were able to figure out within 3 weeks of hiring Mr. Pompliano that he wasn't competent.

These two aspects of Snapchat's version seem to have a consistency problem at the least, and indicate Snapchat has no shortage of incompetent management at best.

Mr. Pompliano's version of events does not seem to suffer from such problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Who to believe?

Just to play Devil's Advocate:

1. If he lied about his capabilities (gross incompetence AND false credentials), he COULD have provided false material to pass the vetting process (quite possible to lay a three-week false trail) and ONLY got busted after (a) the trail went cold or (b) he did something SO incompetent that the falsehood couldn't be covered up anymore.

2. See #1, quite possible if he was willing to lie AND set up false trails (get others to swear by him). It's not like anyone's got a lie-detecting Lens or whatnot.

So either Snapchat has incompetent managers OR they've been duped by some really good liars. Just saying.

PS. As for the plaintiff, since the stuff is redacted it's impossible to say, but if he presented something that's clearly impossible, too far-fetched to be believable, or there's no way Snapchat can actually back up those numbers (which would be a serious investor question), then perhaps he has a case. We just can't tell at this point.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Who to believe?

"1. If he lied about his capabilities (gross incompetence AND false credentials), he COULD have provided false material to pass the vetting process (quite possible to lay a three-week false trail) and ONLY got busted after (a) the trail went cold or (b) he did something SO incompetent that the falsehood couldn't be covered up anymore."

Bear in mind that "Pompliano said that he had been heavily recruited to Snapchat from rival Facebook" so they specifically wanted this guy and Facebook were obviously happy to retain him despite the alleged incompetence (but not offer more than Snapchat to keep him). Fudging the numbers probably is standard practice in these sorts of operations, but if he was prepared to accept that Facebook was at least trying to be more or less honest to the extent that he didn't see a need to whistleblow on them, that really doesn't say much for the level of fudging he allegedly saw at Snapchat.

[veti]

Re: Who to believe?

You mean, you think there's a possibility that a web company isn't inflating its stats?

Now that would be news.

The alarming thing here is that, apparently, there exist people with money who are willing to invest it on the basis of numbers they see in a prospectus from Snapshat. Which they surely must know are bullshit?

[ecofeco]

Re: Who to believe?

Tough? What significant product does Snapchat provide and what profits does it provide?

The answer is "none" to both question.

[Nate Amsden]

Re: Who to believe?

Easy for me having worked for 2 different social media companies that imploded. Bullshit numbers are the name of the game. Last social media company I was at their web traffic numbers were going down at a 45 degree angle on the graphs month after month.

On my exit interview they had the balls to say I was wrong and their traffic wasn't going down the tubes. I only ran the servers that ran the site what could I possibly know more than HR on website traffic.

First social media startup we delivered tons of emails. Companies like yahoo and google started banning us because of too many bounces. We asked to remove the users from the system so there would be less bounces and more email would go through. The answer was "no, that would hurt our user numbers".

That company was basically in the same market as linkedin. They would have contests to see how many users employees could get to sign up. (Same at 2nd social media company too). I never participated in that shit. My linkedin network(1st to 3rd degree?) alone literally exeeded the number of users at my employers social media company which at the time was around 50k I think. Clients would pay big bucks to use the site to recruit people. Software was clunky and buggy. We had to fly people on site to hold their hands to use the software. That was expensive. They stopped that practice and usage dropped like a rock overnight.

Oh oh!! I forgot this bit too. That company was at one point going to be THE partner for social hiring shit on facebook. They had an agreement and everything. Then literally at the last minute (few days from launch) facebook opened up a bunch of APIs and killed the agreement. They gave us some free advertising credits or something to compensate. I laughed so much. Such clueless folk. CEO has started several companies and last I heard every single one has gone down in flames. Why the hell do people keep giving that guy money. One of his more recent companies lost several hundred million or something. He seems to be always looking for the next SHINY.

Only social media I use is linked in. Very light usage of that even. But I do find it useful for career shit. I am terrible at keeping in touch with folks.

[Camilla Smythe]

Accurate Metrics from...

... a company that relies on advertising to generate cash?

Good luck with that one.

Anyway, zero fucks given about how many bazillion ads they think they have spaffed at their users, fake users/ads or otherwise. What's on the bottom line in the accounts?

[Alistair]

Re: Accurate Metrics from...

as far as I've been able to tell Ms Smythe, I think that would be a negative number.

[ecofeco]

Re: Accurate Metrics from...

... a company that relies on advertising to generate cash?

And that right there is all the smoking gun you need.

[Anonymous Coward]

Headline is brill

We're off to a bangin' start to 2017!

[Anonymous Coward]

google snap chat and FTC

Title says it all, anonymous because well being pro whistle blower online is career suicide.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: google snap chat and FTC

Even WITH Federal whistleblower protection? I would think companies would not want more federal agents snooping around if they react badly to a whistleblower.

[ecofeco]

Pump and dump is fraudulent?

Shocked I tell. Shocked.

[CrosscutSaw]

Just wait

It will all blow over in 10 seconds.