And therein lies a wildly inept understanding of Snapchat that is so common among people outside of its main demographic.
Yes, but this new way requires the target to physically engage with the ad. The sponsored filters allow quite a bit of personalization, which seems to be something young people want more of. Not really a heavy Snapchat user, but I think it's helpful to think of them as an advertising platform instead of a disappearing photo company.
I do, however, share your "who cares" gut reaction to all of this.
I'm a fan.
Well isn't that a problem if people outside of its main demographic with "wildly inept understanding" of the company might be the same people you hope to sell shares to? The kids aren't the ones that will be buying the stock.
Though I bet the fact that so many financial types love Twitter could be resulting in Twitter getting more love than it should on the markets (even now), I don't think the inverse happens.
Instagram users sparsely update and check their feeds. Snapchat is much more rapid, and users tend to post much more content though out the day.
I'm somewhat reminded of when Drew Houston launched Dropbox and showed it to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 The comments are somewhat dismissive.
