[riot504]

Snapchat is valuable from a monetary perspective, but actual real value is little to none. No one is going in 10 years will say Snapchat changed our lives or progressed society's knowledge. People will look back wondering why it made a handful people beyond wealthy.

[srtjstjsj]

no one forces people to use snapchat. people use it because it adds value. maybe it's not better than AIM or whatever, but it is still valuable.

[Retric]

Considering AIM just got shut down, that's a rather poor long term outlook.

Which I think is the point. To be a new billion dollar company (vs pump and dump) you need to either make 100's of millions in profit for a few short, but profitable years. Or, have steady profits and steady growth over a very long time scale.

[s73ver_]

Yeah, but to be honest, that's true of the vast majority of companies, tech or non.

[alexanderstears]

You're not wrong, but the 'frightful 5' were all transformative for society. The point is that the big companies quash non-transformative small companies.

[riot504]

True, but the vast majority of small companies (~24 for Snapchat) don't make people multi-millionaires by providing so little to society.