I guess something is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. But for the life of me, I simply cannot see a viable business model here. Spiegel has gotten incredibly lucky with a dubious app that has all the fundamental investment worth of a Ponzi scheme.

For those that got in quickly and sold almost as fast, it was a nice little earner. I strongly doubt advertising revenue over the next 5 years will represent a fraction of that 30B.

What's more, the users of Snapchat are a notoriously fickle lot. My 13 year old daughter and her friends thought it was pretty cool for about a month. It has now been relegated to the same scrapheap as Facebook. They would rather be seen at a Julio Iglesias concert with their grandparents than have a Facebook profile since the cool factor is roughly the same.