Over the past couple weeks, VCs and analysts have been lauding the immersive and teleportive nature of Meerkat’s live streaming. While I don’t disagree with their analyses, I find their reactions fascinating, as they are repeating almost the exact things that students have been saying about Snapchat, and specifically it’s ‘Our Stories’ product, for a while.

This disconnect shouldn’t be surprising. In-depth analysis of Snapchat is consistently sparse, most likely due to the demographic gap between its most avid users and the thought leaders of technology. But this one-sided, echo chamber is a disservice to anyone interested the future of technology, as it is simply not possible to have a conversation about Meerkat and live video without truly understanding Snapchat and its product philosophies.

Our Stories

A Snapchat ‘Our Story’ is a curated collection of photos and videos from a...

Semil Shah wrote an interesting post last night on the tiers of the “on-demand stack”. At the bottom is Labor - the TaskRabbits, the Uber drivers, the Instacarters. At the top are the Applications - the branded, closed experiences that have always been a company’s touchpoint with its customers.

Yet it seems that there might be a push to add another, thin but expansive, layer on top - a messaging layer. And while this layer may begin with on-demand services, it’s hard to imagine where it could end.

For example, if you haven’t already, check out this cool project, Magic. With Magic, instead of opening Postmates to order dinner, Drizly to get some booze, or BloomThat to get flowers, I simply type, “Order my favorite Chipotle burrito”, “I need a twelve-pack”, or “Send flowers to my girlfriend”. And then, voila, the layer connects to the relevant service and places my order.

Yet, as cool...