Rich Greenfield, BTIG media and tech analyst, came by Business Insider for an interview with executive editor Sara Silverstein. In this clip he explains the only way Snapchat can survive its competition with Facebook. Following is a transcript of the video.
Sara Silverstein: And one more. Just Snap. How are you feeling about Snap?
Richard Greenfield: When you look at the innovation, it’s been astounding. I met the company when they were 20 people sitting in a beach house in Venice, California.
And if you would told me that what was essentially, what we know — it was considered at the time, if you picked up The Wall Street Journal and wrote an article on Snapchat then — it was a sexting app. I mean, point blank, that's what people literally thought of it as and if you think of the brilliance of Evan Spiegel to take what that was to its storytelling to the point where Facebook is literally copying Snapchat from a feature standpoint and doing Instagram stories.
Silverstein: But can Snapchat survive that with something like Facebook coming after them so hard?
Greenfield: Look, that’s the question. I mean, you look at Instagram stories. It has now surpassed 250 million users daily users, blown right past Snapchat and just never looked back. I mean the number almost looks vertical, in terms of the speed of the Instagram stories growth. The question for Snapchat, for investors and the reason we're sitting on the sidelines at neutral and just kind of waiting is that it really comes down to innovation. Can Evan Spiegel and the team and Bobby Murphy and the other co-founder, can they out-innovate Instagram?
Silverstein: In a way that Facebook can’t copy them.
Greenfield: They have to out-innovate. You know, stories as a format happened what three years ago and it took ‘til now for Facebook to copy them? We don't know what we don't know, you know in terms of product. They've given no view on like the product pipeline for obvious reasons. You know, if there's an amazing product out of Snapchat, there's only upside and value creation that could be had. If there isn't awesome value creation, they certainly under siege from Facebook and there's no doubt that the Instagram, you know is a real threat. It’s what makes us very cautious on what is still a very big valuation. You know, on a relative basis, we’d much rather have Twitter here then Snapchat.