Snap IPO Approaches And We See A Massive Conflict Coming

Snap, the parent of wildly "successful" app Snapchat is going public with a valuation between $19.5B-$22.2B.

One of the principal concepts of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are only available for a short time before they become inaccessible. Yeah the pics disappear because they aren't on my screen any more :)

Users are lead to believe their messages are "private" but as we all know, NOBODY reads the Privacy Policy in 6 font.

That's where we see:

"you grant Snap Inc. and our affiliates a worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to host, store, use, display, reproduce, modify, adapt, edit, publish, and distribute that content."

"you also grant Snap Inc., our affiliates, and our business partners the unrestricted, worldwide, perpetual right and license to use your name, likeness, and voice.  (think about that all you present and future celebrities).

Can you see where this is going in this day of Internet celebrities?

What brand wouldn't pay to use Kim Kardashian's pics (or think of any other self absorbed person taking selfies) to promote their brand?

Here's the thing..there's nothing they can do about it.

"This means, among other things, that you will not be entitled to any compensation from Snap Inc., our affiliates, or our business partners if your name, likeness, or voice is conveyed through Live, Local, or other crowd-sourced Services, either on the Snapchat application or on one of our business partner’s platforms" (source)

Think of the other adult oriented possibilities with all of those nudie shots too. Would you want your face/body/voice be part of a porn movie promotion, STD commercial, pharmaceutical product, bankruptcy ad, or anything that you would be embarrassed (or have to explain to your friends)?

ALWAYS REMEMBER..if the service is free you are the PRODUCT, not the consumer.

So the question is would users pay a subscription fee if the company promised to not share any content with any 3rd party?

Is their a metric that could determine profitability to number of paid users?

I see some very interesting conflicts arising with this one.