Agreed. This is why Snapchat is attractive, and the model of "get users and content now, monetize later" has worked in the past. So this is simply a scaled-up challenge. I'm curious to see how Snapchat makes its money.

Here's some of my ideas and they all involve in-app purchases:

* Corporate deals that allow you to place products in your snaps, kinda like Photoshop. Example: you pay $0.99 to be able to place a character from South Park in your Snap.

* High-quality snaps, that take advantage of your camera's full resolution

* Sound snaps, so you can record 30 seconds of audio and send it to a friend. Great for sharing tracks you make or music you're hearing, or just to record some idiot yelling on the bus.

There are many more possibilities. Snapchat can almost be thought of as a "social game", a sort-of cross between FarmVille, Instagram and Twitter. You can still share basic things to your friends, but you can pay to send even better things. My ideas may or may not be shitty, but they still prove that the service probably can monetize, in my opinion.