6 ms·

You've been brainwashed. The best option for consumers is for it to be free, with no ads.

• Groxx 13y ago
  because it's best for consumers when things they like go away?
• bennyg 13y ago
  Exactly my point. Option 3 is free for everyone with optional purchases for those that want it. The parent of my comment would rather see ads than purchase Pro. But those aren't mutually exclusive. He/She can still not see ads and not purchase pro while Snapchat makes money.
  • dave5104 13y ago
    I certainly wouldn't complain about option 3... but I'd be very weary of whether that would be /enough/ for Snapchat.
• jerf 13y ago
  No, it's not. That ends with no service existing at all. Money has to come from somewhere for the service.
  • ansible 13y ago
    Does this really need to be a centralized service though? Isn't this the sort of thing that could be implemented as a peer-to-peer networking service?
    • jerf 13y ago
      That doesn't get away from the issue of payment, it just moves it around. I think it does so in a way with a lot of positives, but there's the whole P2P bootstrapping problem in the way, both in terms of creating the code that even works and then actually bringing the network online, and unfortunately it seems that's a pretty big negative in practice.
      • Karunamon 13y ago
        It just "moves it around" to the point where the cost is so spread out as to be effectively zero. What's the average cost of a volunteer-run peer to peer file sharing network?
        • jerf 13y ago
          How many computers running P2P software does it take to write the software? You can only talk about the "all but 0" marginal cost when you can produce a piece of software that really does have an all-but-0 marginal cost. And, therefore, doesn't require the computer running it to be always on, or run on a dedicated VM, etc. Sure, such a thing may be possible, but you have to produce it first. Unfortunately.
        • btown 13y ago
          The cost comes in the labor of the organization that needs to bootstrap and maintain the network of volunteers - this includes marketing to them that it's safe and worthwhile to load software onto their computer. For instance, SETI@home has a budget in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sah_budget.php http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sah_budget.php . Who would donate to Snapchat@home when it's just as easy to get Snapchat+ads on your phone?
    • Klinky 13y ago
      See the Diaspora project for how great/easy P2P social networking is. Getting P2P working on bandwidth and port limited smartphone connections sounds like a nightmare.
    • mbreese 13y ago
      No. It couldn't be a peer-to-peer setup because you couldn't guarantee that all peers would delete photos after they expire. This has to be centralized in order to guarantee that.
      • acchow 13y ago
        Well, you could have only one user (such as the sender) hold the decryption key and be willing to securely send it only to the recipient within a given expiry... The distributed data could still be floating around but would be unreadable. There are plenty of distributed designs which could be secure and "read once within a time period". (btw, a distributed network topology can look isomorphic to a centralized topology at the application layer. You seem to have a highly simplistic map of the territory.)
• criley 13y ago
  You've been brainwashed. There is no such thing as a free lunch. All services cost. Who will pay for your free service? Venture capital only lasts so long. The best option for consumers is one that meets their needs for as long as they need it, not one that exceeds their needs for six months until the doors close...