Most people on HN bearish on SNAP...and I am too in the short term. The problem with SNAP at the moment it is HARD to spend money on ads. There is no open API that individual businesses / ad agencies can use to easily spend...meaning longer iteration cycles for companies trying to figure out creative etc and turn it into a profitable channel.

As long as they can deliver SOME value to advertisers in the form of app installs/ traffic to site/whatever businesses will find it and do SNAP's job for them - turn it into a profit machine once they have programmatic access. From what I can see they are copying FB's ad platform which is great...once that API is out there I think it will be a different game.

Or they could just end up like TWTR