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Comment by therobot24 | Hacker News Reader

The article reads like a jealous 30-something founder/ceo/evangelist/whatever_is_trendy writing off snap-chat as a 'boy-band'. Facebook offering $3 Billion shows that snap-chat is indeed starting to eat facebook's lunch (future users)...you know facebook, the company geared toward teens, college kids, and in the last few years, older adults. So maybe the article is right, kids aren't indicators toward the future of tech (kindle, ipod, whatever), but they are indicators of the multi-billion dollar market that exists for them that Facebook current resides within. The author needs to throw out the "i know more than you" attitude and look at the market that snap-chat has either created (facebook not gearing toward teens) or is stealing.

This should especially ring with HN, as everything i've read here is about how if you have some crazy idea there's probably a market for it.

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If having a huge exit is the goal of SnapChat, hopefully they will not regret the decision to turn down 3 billion. Longevity in social platforms is a bit of the exception, not the rule.

Time will tell if Snapchat has legs or not.

SnapChat is the tech equivalent of a boy-band. The very idea of sending something that only lasts a few seconds is snarky, and really only appeals to immature folk, ie. snarky kids. I'm okay with not being part of the kid crowd, or basing my evaluations on a volatile age group, after all, I've grown up and I'm much more _stable_ now.

The value I get out of it is the ability to be completely unfiltered. I carefully manage what I post to facebook, because a) it's going out to a lot of people and b) it's there forever.

I even felt slightly uneasy with G+'s Circles--even if I'm targeting my posts, I still feel pressure. I try to make my photos look nice, post statuses that people will actually like, and generally keep things "pristine."

Snapchat removes all this pressure, and because of that, I find it a joy to use.

That's wonderful. But the value you get out of it and the value an investor gets out of it are two very different matters. A price of $3 billion demands something like $120 million^ in profit, annually, in perpetuity... or more, if there's significant risk in the business plan like "we assume we will get that money in the future and are not making any of that money now".

(^ using a S&P500-ish 4% real discount rate here, to keep things simple)

Of course, I think the company is massively overvalued.

One thing I think they do have, however, is really strong engagement. Whenever I browse facebook or twitter, I'm very detached. I'm probably even working on something else. It's the same as when I occasionally watch TV -- half attention at best.

With Snapchat, I've got laser-focus. Whatever I'm looking at is going away in seconds and will never come back, so it's got a special urgency.

I'm sure it won't be easy to convert this into revenue, but I believe that engagement is special.

At the risk of stating the obvious, if you are sending pictures (or text) via snap chat that you do not want the world to see, then you are making a mistake.

It is trivially easy to capture screenshots from any screen, and the 'protection' that snapshot puts in place does absolutely nothing to stop this.

I would think twice before trusting that anything you post is not going to be widely available.

I'm not sending anything racy or inappropriate. They're just not photos I would want on my facebook, which is very much a "curated" representation of myself.

It's great for photos that are badly-lit, or inane, or make me look unattractive, or related to some sort of in-joke, or that only make sense in the moment. I wouldn't be mortified if any of them were released; they just don't make sense on my carefully-tended social media profiles.

The draw, at least for me, is not covertness or secrecy. It's a form of expression that doesn't demand the "does this really belong on my public profile?" test, which is really liberating.

That's a silly hand-wavy thing to say that doesn't reflect how Snapchat is actually used.

Although it's trivial to take a screenshot, the sender receives an alert telling them which friend took it. Given snapchat is used for sharing pictures with your close friends, that puts having your Snapchat made public in the same probability range as having your mobile phone hacked and pictures posted online. Sure, it happens, but that's a risk people are obviously willing to take.

Snapchat provides a mechanism for trusting your friends now without needing to trust them for infinity.

(a) it really is trivially easy to work around the notification so it doesn't get sent.

(b) yep, as you said, even with the notification it is trivially easy for someone to take any picture that you send and post it to the forever webs.

So, I reiterate, do not send anything via snap chat that you do not wish to one day become public.

What is the difference between this and sending a SMS? If it isn't racy or something you need to hide, why is snapchat better than sending a text? Why does the "meh" picture need to disappear from the world and not just hide in your friends text messages at the back of the list?

"or something you need to hide"

I think in your argument you mistyped "or" instead of "and".

Its for stuff you want to hide, at least at little.

Its an issue of formality. FB is for advertising to future employers, your dinner manners need to be emily post level or you'll pay for it, or you're making a statement about manners and how little you respect employers who demand table manners. On the other hand, SC is the dinner manners equivalent of pizza with your buddies at the lan party, so eat with your hands, use shirt as napkin, its all good.

I'm not really sure I agree with the "snarky" sentiment, but I do agree in some sense that it is equivalent to a boy band. The end value (since the content is so momentary) is pretty fleeting, and (not a business export here, but) there doesn't really seem to be any way to monetize this sort of thing. In that sense, this app (and apps like it) can't really be any sort of long term.

how does this address any part of my rebuttle? You said you're not the demographic and don't understand why it's popular, thus the service is a 'boy-band' equivalent of the startup world.

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