In hindsight everything looks obvious. At the time the failure of MySpace was still fresh, Facebook had not monitized its service and it wasn't obvious that chat clients like WhatsApp and SnapChat would (or could) get these insane multi-billion valuations.
I think it was obvious. I remember being in college during the acquisition and thinking it was obviously a smart deal. And Instagram was pursued hotly, so many tech insiders thought it was a good deal too.
People on Hacker News are only now just coming around to Snapchat, but I thought Snapchat was obviously going to succeed 4 years ago when I was still in college - 70% of the people I knew in college were using it.
You might object to this and claim that other apps (which are not guaranteed successes now) like Yik Yak should have been similarly "obvious" to me at the time - but that's just not true. I didn't know anyone who used other social media apps (like Yik Yak, etc.) at the time as much as Snapchat (if they did, they kept it to themselves).
But when it comes to social apps, there's just something about Hacker News being particularly closed-minded. Even in the face of overwhelming usage, I still see a solid plurality of cynical HN comments about any given social app.
I don't object to the veracity of your claims but I would note that "it's what everyone around me is using" doesn't scale very well. For example, if you're from the U.S. you might not know anyone who uses WhatsApp nevertheless it has over a billion users and is the default messenger app in many countries.
having a user base and monetizing and succeeding as a profitable business are not the same, this was not much after the 08 crunch , there could have been a repeat of 2000s bubble, VC money could have dried up, sure guessing it would work out was cool and all, it certainly wasn't the obvious outcome
