When Facebook offered the folks at Snapchat a few billion to join forces a while back, it must have been a very, very tempting offer.
Equally, when Evan Spiegel and his team turned that offer down, a lot of commentators decided that he was stupid for doing so, and that Facebook had offered way more than the company was worth.
Those people are notably a bit quieter today after the company has reportedly been valued at levels far beyond what Zuckerberg was willing to hand over to Snapchat, showing that Spiegel's confidence in the model that he had was not misplaced.
According to Cnet, Snapchat is looking for funding and is hoping to raise about $500 million, which shouldn't really be a problem as they're expecting "a valuation of between $16 billion and $19 billion, making it the one of the top three venture capitalist-backed startups, behind car service Uber and smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi". Not bad going for a service that is almost synonymous with unsolicited pictures of genitals.
Anyway, the valuation was more than likely helped by the recent update to Snapchat which saw them introduce a Discover feature; essentially a place where brands can send you advertising, and companies such as The Daily Mail and ESPN jumped on board, with more sure to follow if it proves successful. Suffice to say, this is probably everyone at Snapchat right now.
Via Cnet