[adotjdotr]

"Probably going out of business due to a lack of revenue."

No. This isn't really that true, the business has placed a great deal of investment on the following: hiring sales people, partnering with measurement (millward brown, nielsen) selling ads like crazy at a premium to the largest F500 brands in the world.

The biggest content creators, celebrities and normals are on the platform. They are creating new forms of expression which have been copied by incumbents namely Instagram.

They have made their first steps into hardware with spectacles which have generated similar type of hype as Yeezys.

So your arguments are not strong enough, its actually laughable you think it lacks revenue. When the S-1 document is public and the gross margins and employee count are revealed we'll see all the risk factors clearly.

Given that the founders most likely own most of the stock, this is a company that is definitely going to succeed as so many people want to work with them.

For an internet marketer you are woefully off the mark with comments like the above.

[mrep]

> The biggest content creators, celebrities and normals are on the platform.

So does twitter and they are losing money every quarter. I can see snap becoming the next FB or the next twitter but I will definitely be betting on the latter due to the lack of data.

> Given that the founders most likely own most of the stock, this is a company that is definitely going to succeed as so many people want to work with them.

I'm sorry, what? How does that correlate at all?

[adotjdotr]

Companies where the founders own a large % of the stock will tend to do better. This will play out more strongly across all sectors over the long-term.

Also, given that I am a target customer that interacts with Snapchat and runs their ads and invests reasonably heavily I am better placed to judge than you are.

The ad products need a lot of work, no doubt about it, but the engagement and earned media generated is super high for a product that doesnt have a biddable solution in place just yet. My clients would agree with me.

The lack of data is being worked on, as I mentioned there are partnerships with Millward Brown and Nielsen. The business will also end up buying 3rd party data and matching it against its user base in order to provide a competitive solution to FB.

The difference is Snapchat doesn't want to collect every single datapoint about a user like FB does.

Despite a set of ad products that are far from the best they can be, this hasnt stopped advertisers wwanting to use the platform for campaigns. Early results are very positive and improvements will come leaps and bounds. Plenty of my most talented peers / colleagues have recently joined snapchat. They wouldn't if the company wasn't doing well, it is.

I am betting it will succeed where Twitter has sadly failed based on the fact it has created a completely different form of communication and expression.

[reconx]

There may be brands looking to drive awareness, like a P&G or Coke or Nike looking to sell you more crap, but advertisers who care about driving sales, measurable sales are not going to be using the platform. As a marketer for a F25, the platform is a joke.

[Gnimza]

So tell me why advertisers pour out billions for TV ads? Same concept/format?

[reconx]

Awareness, as I mentioned. But the TV medium is dying. Internet marketing is thriving b/c of the ability to target users/consumers with the right ads, at the right time...when you don't have am option to do that, then it falls apart.

Meanwhile for companies like FB, who mine every aspect of your life, the service is now valued at over $300Billion