Changing the landscape of social media

Imagine  a phone application that allows you to send disappearing message to your friends and family. Simple Right? You're probably thinking to yourself, “oh aren't you talking about snapchat?” Yes of course it's snapchat. Now imagine that this app could soon be worth up to twenty-five billion dollars! According to a story done by the Atlantic, they are reporting that Snap Inc, Snapchat’s parent company, “ Is considering a 2017 initial public offering that would value the brand at $25 billion.” My initial reaction to this story was disbelief. I understood that companies like facebook are extremely popular and expensive companies,  but snapchat? I mean, sending picture to your friends that will be lost forever after ten seconds? Not to mention that's all it was. Meaning there was no other aspect of snapchat that can offer the same sort of interacting hat facebook and twitter offer. Now, this was my initial reaction. But after pondering the question I have had a change of heart. I actually was quite intrigued by this story and dug up some further research. In fact, snapchat has recently integrated a instant messaging system where you can actually chat with friends.  This addition is actually really popular. According to a study done by Bloomberg, Snapchat is in the top five in instant messaging applications. In addition to these features, snapchat is extremely popular. That little ghost icon seems to be everywhere. Even on a huge billboard in times square that I had visited recently. It would make sense that Snapchat's main source of income comes from their ad revenue. In the study done by bloomberg, snapchat's revenue “ is expected to rise fourfold by 2018,” Fourfold! If it wasn't already popular enough I mean seriously that number seems outrageous to me. But it gets even crazier. In the Atlantic article it is stated, “That at the app, which has over 150 million users, will pull in $1 billion of ad revenue by the close of 2017.” These are not projections by any means, these are cold hard facts. I believe that Snapchat has now entered that elite tier of Social media. Or as I like to call, “The big three,” which includes facebook, twitter, and now snapchat. There may be some conjecture about this thesis because some people may be wondering about snapchat's archival instagram. Its no secret that Instagram is amongst the most popular of social media. Ill even admit i use instagram ay more than I do snapchat. But in my opinion there's no question snapchat will eventually become a more legitimate social media player. In recent months, Instagram has expanded on snapchat's,”story” idea with coming up with instagram stories. I really am not sure how that came to be because It is almost an identical rip-off of snapchat. Its obvious that these two companies are in a fight against one another, but I think in the years to come snapchat will easily become the next top player in social media.