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In the UK at least the teens I know consider snapchat uncool and hard to use; they prefer to use Instagram. When I travel to India and the far East (Indonesia and the Philippines most recently) people seem to be all about WhatsApp. Obviously a small sample and the plural of anecdote isn't data, but you don't quote sources for your "vast vast vast majority of young people" either.

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Which is to say: network effects are king and people will use what their social contacts already use in essentially all cases. I think that argues strongly against Snapchat as a growth bet, given the numbers in the article.

Yes, I really like Snapchat's app, it takes some time getting used to the UI but I found the heat map to be a killer feature, pound for pound I find it better than Instagram(still, I think they would benefit by copying Instagram rolling non-ephemeral pictures feed).

However, I don't use Snapchat because none of my friends do, I've met some Americans traveling who use it and that is all, I think a lot of people don't even know what Snapchat is while everyone knows what Instagram is even if they don't use it, that is all because of network effects.

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