I'll suggest a simpler framework for valuing Snapchat: probability of becoming another Facebook. If you think it has a 5% chance, then it should be valued at around 5 billion (relative to Facebook's 100 billion).
Your strategy has merit, but simply making another Facebook is not going to work now (It would have back in Myspace days). Now there is not an untapped market of people - almost everyone has things vested in social media companies. 1. Companies need either to do better then Facebook (Once again Google tried. Do not get me wrong, there is a fair chance that eventually Google+ will prevail, but very few projects have full might of Google paving their success.) 2. Or have different punchline than Facebook does to attract users (This is what Snapchat did). *typoed
There is no true social network born on mobile, and although facebook might win, I'm not sure that it's "never" going to happen
It'll probably die off eventually but what replaces it will probably look nothing like it and will exist in a much different climate.
So if there was no Facebook would another Facebook clone take it's place? Intuitive answer is yes, until you start thinking. How did Facebook got so big? It was best product on the market. So now Facebook is dead, what happened to Facebook? Is there a reason it died, if Facebook could not survive, how will it clones will not only survive, but thrive?
So here I would like to make a small prediction. The only way there will be another Facebook, if someone would make something better. Something which will either do things that Facebook does better - and hence kill it off, or something that will open entire new market.
TL:DR If you want to get big you can't be another Facebook: you either must be different or better.
How many here remember sixdegrees.com? (1996) That's the first social networking site I remember signing up to...
Of course you must be "different", but the difference between each successive evolutionary step from Six Degrees to Facebook has been tiny.
While it is getting harder as the size of the successive networks have gotten bigger (SixDegrees reached a low number of million users), because of the network effects, it's not so much about features as about finding a way of building the network to a tipping point, and social networks are incredibly fickle and subsets can migrate to new services because they are not the dominant network.
People like to be unique. They don't like to be grouped in with the rest of the world. This is especially true with teenagers. You don't have to make a better Facebook, you just have to make a new Facebook. It needs that feeling of being fun and exclusive, which Facebook is quickly lacking and can never gain.
Google+ will never succeed. Yes, they've invested countless dollars and time from some of the brightest minds available, but the name Google is simply too big, and too well known. It's boring from day one, there's nothing cool or hip about signing up on Google+.
all this still doesn't make it "cool" with 1B of teenagers (don't know what does - if i knew i would probably not be wasting time here :), and 1B a new Facebook would make.
I disagree and agree. I agree there will not be another Facebook. I disagree, because Facebook is not the end of the line for social networks, just like Altavista and Inktomi were not the end of the line for search engines.
No one in the social network space has yet hit the quality Google hit with search. I fully agree that once that place is hit, it will be very, very difficult to dislodge whoever does it.