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Comment by curiously | Hacker News Reader

How do you monetize a large user base without credit cards? How would they get teens to get their parents to pay for the ability to send nude pics to their friends?

Meanwhile, millions of small businesses paying $10 a month for secure document shredding with years of increasing profit remains large ignored by the media, nobody bats an eye. Nobody puts an insane valuation on it because it's not cool. So business is no longer about positive net cash flows but spending it. Whoever spends money in the coolest way is the winner as long as you got investors who suddenly forgot what happened the last time we were in the new and hip economy.

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  How do you monetize a large user base without credit cards?

Ask Facebook. With Snapchat's curated "Our Story" stream it would be easy for them to superimpose a brand's logo on top of snaps that would get viewed by an audience that fits a particular demographic. I'd wager that companies see value in that.

I'd agree with that. You have to have a market's attention before the sell -- whatever that may be -- and Snapchat has that right now. I think this particularly applies to younger markets. For example, when I was a kid cartoons were basically 30 minute advertisements for toys and games. And you had better believe I let my parents know those toys were must haves. Snapchat might be in the best position to be that platform for the teenage market, a new MTV if you will.

Yeah it would be like subliminal messaging, like they used to do in cinemas. Remind me why they stopped?

They didn't stop. The industry term of art these days is "embedded advertising" and it's used in television and movies far more than you would think. Hear a character mention a current brand name seemingly off-hand? Yeah, not an accident.

Sure, that's product placement, and it is very hard to do well. Remember the Cisco placement in CSI, or Omega in Casino Royale? Utterly cringeworthy.

Subliminal messaging is flashing something up too quickly to consciously register, but still leaving an impression.

It's actually beyond product placement. It's about getting something in the story line that triggers brand awareness. This doesn't even mean showing or mentioning the product directly. I know several screenwriters who have their work subjected to this kind of editing. It is utterly subliminal and not at all similar to the popular culture version of "subliminal messaging" that you refer to.

On the subject of James Bond there's another scene in the same film where he's using a Sony Ericcson phone. Really, the suavest man in the world rocks a Sony phone? It's embarrassing to watch.

The majority of ad $ spend has been in TV. It's not because there was a credit card reader on each TV, but because there was not a better way to get that kind of wide exposure. There is tons of money transitioning from TV to other areas.

I would be insanely grateful to fly under the radar like that, were I the owner of a business that had millions of paying customers. Let the media crow about Snapchat all they want, and dry your tears on hundred dollar bills.

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