This is why acquisitions happen and why buying Instagram when FB did may go down as one of the best buys. Missing Snapchat may be one of the biggest misses.
It's great for teens and early adults, with tight knit social circles and the undivided attention to look at fast-disappearing posts, but that's not much of the population. Lots of people don't even understand how it works, while Facebook and Instagram are pretty intuitive.
My bet is the current audience will age out of Snapchat, gradually seeing it as something for kids, and the next group of kids will use something else entirely.
Of course, I could be wrong--I wouldn't have predicted Snapchat would get as big as it has, so more power to them if they can keep it going.
The first time was when I first heard of it, "that'll never take off what a dumb fad app."
The second time was when they turned down the $40MM offer from facebook.
The third time was when they turned down the $3B offer from facebook.
They're now valued at $16B. I don't bash snapchat anymore.
Turns out snapchat isn't just for messaging anymore, a lot of people watch the channels on it as if it was any other form of TV, and advertisers absolutely love it.
I'm sure it will be disrupted at some point, but I've stopped trying to "call it."
Most of our cultural output (books, films etc) works like that already.
BUT even if they did, this is why investing in acquisitions makes sense. Theoretically everyone could stop using Facebook itself but it wouldn't matter as long as FB owned the platforms where everyone had migrated.