My guess is that Pinterest will have the most to prove in 2016 among the Unicorns. By far the biggest social network in terms of valuation with the least proven source of revenue.
Personally, I think Snapchat has the most to prove.
Snapchat, on the other hand, at least provides a communication channel for a very active demographics. Yes, it has to compete with a lot of big guys in the space, but the utility is there in the product.
I think someone said it elsewhere in the thread, they're replacing all those magazines suburban housewives used to read, and they can advertise more efficiently than those magazines because they have better data about you and can get between you and the transaction.
Yes, I understand they aren't monetizing it. Yet.
At least Snapchat has gotten much more serious about experimenting with ads. Pinterest is still in this early Facebook stage of "we don't really care about making money right now," which I don't think really flies anymore for a company of that stage.
Tweet from 2012. If the graph Levie is referring to is indeed accurate, then fast forwarding 3 years later means growth for Pinterest has effectively halted.
They did have extremely explosive growth though (perhaps the fastest ever?)
I'm very bullish in Pinterest (see my other comments), but that may indicate a challenge to them.
OTOH, in comparison to an older site like ebay, they do have pretty significant traffic[2].
[1] https://www.google.com.au/trends/explore#q=pinterest%2C%20sn...
[2] https://www.google.com.au/trends/explore#q=pinterest%2C%20sn...