> Snapchat is the darling of technology: for years, we’ve fawned over the company for being innovative, using daring interfaces and out of the ordinary tactics to get people to pay it.

We have? I've always thought it was a pretty basic photo messaging app that initially rose to popularity due to disappearing nudes and has since rode that wave with vapid filters.

My own experience tallies with this quite closely. I think we passed peak Snapchat last year, and that Snap knows it, hence the IPO.

Which is depressing if you think about it, because it means Facebook's strategy of "buy them, and if they won't sell, clone them and crush them" is working really well. That's not how I want the world to work, but that's the truth.