Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1084

When Snap Inc. announced its Q2 financial results earlier this month , it reported 173 million daily active users – an increase of 21% year-over-year. But this fell short of what was expected. Analysts were expecting 175.2 million DAUs . 

(Snap defines a DAU as anyone who opens the Snapchat app during a defined 24 hour period.)

Regardless of your position on this stock, one thing is clear about the company: they are very creative and they continue to innovate.

The company is currently testing a new feature called “ Crowd Surf .” What it does is automatically stitch together related Snapchat Stories from the same location to form seamless videos. 

It made its debut at a concert in San Francisco. The real magic is how Crowd Surf was able to assemble a continuous audio track using an assortment of 10-second Snapchat Stories, all taken from different locations at the concert and all from different users.

Click here and scroll down for a preview video.

To accomplish all of this, Snap takes a “sound print” of the audio playing in a particular location from people’s Stories. It then filters each of the clips so they sound more alike and autogenerates a stitched together video.

You obviously need a critical mass of users and content for this to work, which is why the feature was introduced at a concert. But it’s certainly a remarkable way of creating valuable content from decentralized user inputs.

I guess the only question is: How long until Instagram copies this?

Photo by Yvette de Wit on Unsplash

Say what you want about Snapchat’s stagnant user base, the company continues to innovate.

The chief economist at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), Bob Dugan, recently published a piece in Macleans called:  why the foreign buyers tax isn’t making Vancouver more affordable .

Here’s an excerpt:

One year after the implementation of the foreign buyers tax, monthly sales to foreign investors now hover around 4 per cent of all sales. But our latest Housing Market Assessment, released in July, still shows a red flag for Vancouver—with particular concern given to overvaluation and price acceleration. Average prices in Vancouver have rebounded to where they were before the tax’s implementation. In between, there was a marked drop, but it appears to have been temporary. In short, Vancouver is largely right back to where it was before the tax.

He goes on to argue that while there are many factors affecting home prices, “supply is by far the chief factor.” This, of course, is a refrain you hear from everyone in the real estate business, so I’m not going to belabor the point.

But I would like to point out some of the percentages. 

Before the tax, foreign sales in Vancouver (to buyers who do not have a permanent address in Canada) were thought to sit at roughly 10%. Immediately following the tax, when everyone was trying to assess the impact, this dropped to ~0.9%. And now it’s back up to somewhere around 4%, according to the article.

Arguably, there has been a slight reduction. Though who knows how accurate these percentages are. There is now a strong incentive to hide foreignness. 

Regardless, CMHC doesn’t believe it’s working.