Facebook was profitable before it went public, and faced serious strategic challenges immediately post IPO (specifically, mobile was exploding and Facebook's mobile story was not good -- it didn't even have advertising).
I guess the meaningfulness of this data point is that people are dubious that SNAP will succeed long term. But that's somewhat tautological: if people thought SNAP would succeed, they'd buy it.
Facebook's mobile story 'was not good'...but it was clearly just a missing set of features in a product that was ripe for infiltrating mobile and they had the cash to buy to eventually buy instagram.
The question is whether Snapchat is fundamentally flawed or a few features away from becoming a strong company.
It just seems to me that they have too much competition against Facebook...a behemoth that's still innovating.
If some company came out with a cool twist on search after Google, I'd be bearish on them as well.
They're still an innovative company. They have one of the world's strongest engineering organizations and an executive team that has the vision to jump into new, hot areas. By all measures they're still innovative especially for their size...
I've seen a big shift among my friends (all below 30) social media usage in the last six months.
Used to see a random one-off Whatsapp story. Now I see 2-3 stories every day.
Instagram stories are much more popular. See anywhere from 5-20 stories from friends as well as brands.
Point is, people who use these stories will never shift to Snapchat now. Even if it doesn't grow Facebook's audience, these features will plug the leaks
I guess the meaningfulness of this data point is that people are dubious that SNAP will succeed long term. But that's somewhat tautological: if people thought SNAP would succeed, they'd buy it.