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That's more than maddening. One company is working on the forefront of an entire ecosystem transformation in a 100 year old entrenched customer base the other...well, let's just say in another 100 years you'll be lucky to find anyone that knows what snap was.

Depends. If Snap fails, and Facebook gets a monopoly for centuries due to network lock-in, we'll know Snap as the last competitor to Facebook.

"Competitor". Externally funded R&D for Facebook.

True - but can you ELI5 for everyone - even though we can infer based on being in tech and can see this - but spell it out for others...

$2 per user year?

From Twitter:

Chris Moore‏ @ctmoore91 Aug 10 More Quick math on $SNAP marketing numbers: - $3.60 per existing user - $89 per acquired user to make revenue of $1.05 per user in... 3 months

That's a little on the high side, but it's not surprising. I work for a company that pays even more for new customers, though we have much higher revenue. An "acquired" user is like an asset when you sell your company.

That's not the same thing though (infrastructure cost).

Just imagine how much profit Amazon would make if it were only AWS and no retail operation.