It clearly wasn't their demise either. My point being that people - including myself - form very strong opinions about what "works" and "doesn't work", while failing to acknowledge the bigger picture.

Companies with this kind of global presence have a better way to measure marketing impact than reading through random Hacker News comments. For what's worth, I think the concept for Snapchat is stupid and I can't see a single use for it, and yet... they managed to get to an IPO.