Clearly some ideas are more easily clone-able than others. It also probably matters how quickly BigCo clones your idea vs how much mindshare and traction you already have.
That being said, Snapchat definitely doesn't have some kind of birthright to make heaps of money off the idea. If there are few barriers to entry and they can't out-execute FB, then they will end up losing, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Maybe the discussion should center more on how inherently dangerous it is to build something on the FB platform vs pursuing other opportunities.
Dropbox was (and is) a great implementation. Photostream is basically hit or miss as to whether it will sync a photo to my personal photostream, and we wait for hours for "shared" photostreams to pick up.
Meanwhile, when I share anything in my Dropbox, personal or shared, it basically syncs real time - as in, while we are talking on a chat, I drop a file into my shared folder, and seemingly at the same time I say, "I dropped a file in our shared folder" the person at the other end says, "Yup, I got it"
It's beyond me why Apple still can't get photostream to be that responsive with their resources and control over the platforms.
Dropbox had to figure out when a file landed in a OS X folder - Apple controls the operating systems!
That being said, Snapchat definitely doesn't have some kind of birthright to make heaps of money off the idea. If there are few barriers to entry and they can't out-execute FB, then they will end up losing, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Maybe the discussion should center more on how inherently dangerous it is to build something on the FB platform vs pursuing other opportunities.