I agree with Brad! Like Snapchat, Myspace (music community and teens word-of-mouth), Facebook (college campus word-of-mouth), Twitter (bloggers, mainstream media, celebs and high school students), Instagram and What’s App (celebrities, high school and college students) are "darling indie stories," which make startups think that being different and simple is all you need to succeed.

Another solid point Brad made: It IS "EXTREMELY challenging to duplicate the success of something where being in the right place at the right time with the right product was a large factor." It's also extremely difficult to ensure that an app will go viral among teens and college-age adults even if you introduce it to them directly/first. In fact, when it comes to apps, functionality, usefulness and purpose are key factors to success as is creating an app that parents won't understand or use. The latter feature doubles as a secret weapon for teens and young adults.

For the record, I learned about Snapchat two years ago from my college intern who described Snapchat as a simple, even "stupid" way to have frivolous fun with her peers and her boyfriend. The collective was usually insanely bored, but apart from each other. Snapchat was a way to kill time, entertain and communicate and privately so. Keep in mind that Snapchat is the app that made headline news in October 2015 for being the tool used to expose Malia Obama's beer pong game experience at Brown University, and you'll understand why Los Angeles high school students "snapped" it up in 2011! Unfortunately for Miss Malia, the privacy factor failed when the chat made its way to Twitter and mainstream media picked up the posts AND the pics!

Remember when the Superdome power outage delayed Super Bowl XLVII? The power going out during the most watched sporting event in America was unintentional, but right place, right time and right message enabled Oreo Cookie to capitalize and win! This article explains how and why simple, clever, memorable things go viral and compares results with paid advertising: www.wired.com/2013/02/oreo-twitter-super-bowl.

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