Snapchat Is Preparing to IPO at a $25 Billion Valuation: Report

[Homerboy]

http://gizmodo.com/snapchat-is-preparing-for-ipo-at-a-25-billion-valuatio-1787497314

Snapchat’s parent company, Snap Inc., is preparing for an initial public offering that is expected to value the company at $25 billion or more, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The newspaper says the company is already filling out the paperwork. But there’s there is no guarantee that a share sale will happen on the timeframe, or that the valuation will remain the same by that date.

I will just leave that here and let that sink in....

(I'd like to WSJ article itself instead of Gizmodo junk, but logins and subscriptions and junk)

 

[Imp]

And Instagram/Facebook just released a product/feature that did what Snapchat did minus the face-morph apps?

 

[master_shake_]

what does snapchat do that makes money?

 

[IronWing]

what does snapchat do that makes money?

Allows you to send pictures of your junk that absolutely, positively disappear after a single viewing. Promise. Scout's honor. No lie.

 

[master_shake_]

Allows you to send pictures of your junk that absolutely, positively disappear after a single viewing. Promise. Scout's honor. No lie.

i know that's not true because my friend snapped a pic of his gf's tits and showed me.

 

[Homerboy]

i know that's not true because my friend snapped a pic of his gf's tits and showed me.

Nothing stops somebody from snapping a pic if a pic sent via snapchat. However the original picture disappears from your account and their servers (they SWEAR it does)

 

[luv2liv]

cant you take a screenshot of what's on the screen before the snapchat pict disappear?
cant understand the appeal of snapchat.
even more confusing on how its worth 25B

 

[Rifter]

whats to stop you from screenshotting it????? this sounds real dumb.

 

[IronWing]

even more confusing on how its worth 25B

I admit I'm geezer enough that I don't understand the new economy. There are people who make a living designing smilies. Like year after year, just designing more and more smilies, drawing a salary and benefits, for smilies.

 

[Printer Bandit]

filters are worth billions

 

[Imp]

whats to stop you from screenshotting it????? this sounds real dumb.

Lalalalal Llalalalaa no you can't. Llalalalala. No way. My dick pics would be all over the net if that were true.

 

[SSSnail]

You see, it's the promise of security that got dumb people to flock to it.

But yeah, I can't wait for this whole dot.com thing to bust. The Big Bang ain't got shit on it.

Yes, I'm a bit bitter and jelly...

 

[kinev]

So, Snapchat is worth 6.25 times as much as Star Wars???

 

[Balt]

Pretty crazy. Even if you think there's value there (I personally don't), their ideas have never struck me as something that they can legally prevent every other media platform from just releasing a clone of.

 

[smackababy]

Pretty crazy. Even if you think there's value there (I personally don't), their ideas have never struck me as something that they can legally prevent every other media platform from just releasing a clone of.

Copying their ideas is moot at this point. What stops someone from making a twitter competitor that allows 150 characters!? What is to stop someone from copying Myspace and then Facebook? Oh, the userbase required to actually sustain said model.

And, for anyone that really wonders how Snapchat makes money, it's advertising. In your feed, at the very top, there are ads and I'm sure they aren't cheap.

 

[Capt Caveman]

cant you take a screenshot of what's on the screen before the snapchat pict disappear?
cant understand the appeal of snapchat.
even more confusing on how its worth 25B

You get notified if somebody screenshots your snap. You can also lower the duration of a snap to as low as 3 seconds making it difficult to screenshot unless you're ready to screenshot it before the snap even appears. Also, snaps are only viewable once unless you add it to your story.

 

[purbeast0]

Those who don't see the value in Snapchat, the value is in it's userbase. I think it's like 100 million people that use it monthly. That's a lot of info to sell and a lot of people to advertise to.

 

[SKORPI0]

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/financial-theory/11/how-an-ipo-is-valued.asp

 

[Mai72]

I watch a lot of Gary Vaynerchuk. If you don't know who he is he took his dad's wine business from $2m a year and turned it into a $60m a year empire. All online. Started in the late 90s. It's called Wine Library.

He also predicted that Twitter would blow up. He got in early and made a bunch of money. Had a chance to invest in Uber. He didn't and lost out. Now, he's all in on Snapchat and has been saying that it's going to blow up.

Gary owns Vadermedia. One of the only marketing companies that promotes companies products solely on social media.

 

[Mai72]

Those who don't see the value in Snapchat, the value is in it's userbase. I think it's like 100 million people that use it monthly. That's a lot of info to sell and a lot of people to advertise to.

Yep. Many people don't see the value in Snapchat. Their loss. The same with Musicality. There are 16 year old girls/boys signing million dollar contracts because of their following on Musicality.

Let that sink in. Lol

 

[Red Squirrel]

It boggles my mind that such simple apps not only get that popular, but are somehow worth this much.

Reminds me when FB bought some app I never even heard of, whatsapp I think? For like what, 2 billion? Just insane the amount of money that gets thrown around now days between companies.

Also makes me realize I need to get off my ass and learn mobile development and generally code more, apparently even simple stuff is worth billions now. Of course you have to get lucky that your app makes it. But does not hurt to try. Even if something sells for a few mil your set for life.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Copying their ideas is moot at this point. What stops someone from making a twitter competitor that allows 150 characters!? What is to stop someone from copying Myspace and then Facebook? Oh, the userbase required to actually sustain said model.

And, for anyone that really wonders how Snapchat makes money, it's advertising. In your feed, at the very top, there are ads and I'm sure they aren't cheap.

IP laws would be the biggest deterrent. I'm sure all those major sites have all sorts of patents on their methods of operating. So you COULD try to do a clone but you would need to do an extensive patent search to make sure that your interface/mechanics of the site don't work the same way. For example Facebook could have a patent like "A method of using multiple servers to load balance a large scale social media platform" so that would stop you from building your system to be scalable. Twitter could patent the idea of short bursts of text, etc...

But yeah even if you did get around all the IP issues and not get sued, userbase would be the 2nd biggest challenge. It's crossed my mind to make another Youtube like site, but good luck trying to get the user base, not to mention affording the infrastructure for it.

 

[Red Squirrel]

So, Snapchat is worth 6.25 times as much as Star Wars???

That, is actually kind of sad to think of.

 

[Mai72]

I don't think cloning Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter or any other social media site would work. For one, you'd have a very difficult time matching their user base. Second, there are other forces in play. Look at Facebook and MySpace. Why did FB take off while MySoace stalled? MySpace was first to the market but in the end FB outperformed them. Who uses MySpace today? Their user base is 1/10 of FB.

 

[purbeast0]

It boggles my mind that such simple apps not only get that popular, but are somehow worth this much.

Reminds me when FB bought some app I never even heard of, whatsapp I think? For like what, 2 billion? Just insane the amount of money that gets thrown around now days between companies.

Also makes me realize I need to get off my ass and learn mobile development and generally code more, apparently even simple stuff is worth billions now. Of course you have to get lucky that your app makes it. But does not hurt to try. Even if something sells for a few mil your set for life.

Eh, the best and most valuable apps are the ones that seem "simple" and "obvious" after the fact.