What about snapchat is useless? Or is this just typical "damn kids these days" speak? The app is an incredible form of communication, and there is a reason people prefer it to other mediums.
If snapchat shutdown tomorrow would anyone actually care, or would they immediately shift to the next best platform?
Compared to say a public utility, car manufacturer, global shipping company, etc.
There are real problems in the world, and snapchat doesn't solve any of them. There are real companies trying to solve these problems, and snapchat is worth more than most of them.
Our obsession with "incredible forms of communication" is in reality just a VC fueled gold rush capitalizing on the current flavor of the week.
You can say this about a lot of great companies. Toyota shuts down tomorrow, I buy a Honda instead. Sure, I wanted the Toyota, but I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. UPS shuts down tomorrow, I use FedEx. Apple shuts down, I use Android. Starbucks shuts down, I go to Peet's.
Snapchat employ's next to no one in comparison and is worth more than entire industries.
These people are already connected, they can communicate on Twitter, FB, SMS, email, phone, skype, gchat, facetime, whatsapp, line, vine, periscope etc etc.
Snapchat is just the current prom queen. Everyone wants to be her date, but in 10 years she will be working at Dairy Queen.
First you compared Snapchat to a completely different industry (automotive) to imply it has an inflated valuation (as though tangible products and heavy manufacturing somehow make a company more legitimate). When a commenter replied with an excellent rebuttal in favor of Snapchat's market position, you instead made the argument that Snapchat does not contribute long-term value to society.
When the parent commenter criticized this viewpoint by drawing a connection to HBO and countering that not all businesses need to change the world, you claimed that people don't need to be any more connected than they were before Snapchat, since they had things like Facebook, Twitter and texting. Why build different things? Why not just be content with the communication platforms we have now? How about we just don't develop things people clearly desire because, "eh, fuck it, they've got general ways to talk to each other already."
Finally you circled back around to being incredulous that a company with only 200 people could be worth more than entire industries and "supply chains." Of all the market analyses available, like margin comparisons or growth potential, you chose to zero in on the number of literal employees as some sort of indication of impact.
How long are you going to move the goal posts? You're one of the most active commenters in this thread but your rhetoric, particularly the bit involving the automotive industry, reminds me very strongly of the way in which people who are too set in their worldview can't fathom the value of new and different technology.
Judging by the political valence of your "VC gold rush" comment, I assume this is where your bias comes from. That and the automotive comparisons lead me to believe you're deeply uncomfortable with the idea that a small number of relatively wealthy, skilled elite can completely dwarf industries built by the comparatively unskilled masses all the while enjoying cushier jobs, better social status and wild employability (to put it as starkly as I can).
Follow this thinking deeply enough and it could even be expressed as simply as, "It's not fair." But that's leverage for you.
If you want to really debate about the future value of Snapchat, why not add some real nuance to the discussion and talk about its advertising platform's advantages (or disadvantages) compared to Google and Facebook?
But it can never be that simple, can it? We got to grow! monetize! have another fundraising round! justify it all with increasingly complex features of progressively marginal utility that further dilute the core funcionality that made it so popular in the first place.
Imagine if HN were to succumb to this disease, it would be a travesty.