History Repeats Itself

In the mid 2000’s I stumbled across a website called eBay. Otherwise known as the place to buy electric scooters. That same day, I entered my parent’s bank account information, and exchanged a year’s worth of savings on my very own candy apple red motorized scooter. But what was interesting is how hesitant I remember my parents being about signing up for an internet payment company. This thing we were forced to use couldn’t be safe, especially if they’ve never heard of it and didn’t know anybody using it.

PayPal in 2004 was just beginning to show it’s teeth. Web 2.0 was in full swing, and there was nothing stopping the giant from becoming one of the most powerful payment processing companies in the world. But PayPal wasn’t just a payment processing company; it was a currency company. It had the ability to track charges, recognize patterns, target specific accounts with fraud, and shut down entire phony organizations from a computer. In effect, PayPal’s valuation was grossly underestimated in 2004.

Snapchat, the most under-estimated company in social media for the last three years, has finally grown it’s wisdom teeth. After an explosive start, being dubbed the “sexting app”, adding location features, and finally hitting mainstream media and celebrities, the ghostly scarey app has finally come back to life. But still, my parents will never trust this app, and that is exactly why it will change the course of history.

Snapchat has added so many features recently that it’s beginning to get a little complicated, and a little more fun. They added location tags (geofilters), face filters, events, news, discover, scannables, & the list goes on and on. But has anyone stopped to think that they may just be distracting us from their bigger plans? While simultaneously shrinking the attention of it’s users? Or better yet, why our parents don’t trust it?

Here’s what I mean.

Large companies, and successful ones, don’t do things without a really, really good reason for doing it. (Generally speaking)

So now you have to ask, why did Paypal come up with a way to track fraudulent charges, and recognize patterns? … Just For fun?

It’s for the same reason that Snapchat purchaed Looksery in September for $150M.

LEVERAGE.

When PayPal first realized they could track fraudulent activities, hold accounts, and target certain organizations, they didn’t know what they had unleashed. For the next decade, this skill set would be pivotal in fighting global crime rings, terrorism, and ultimately become the world’s premier surveilence system. What better way to monetize your business, than to have federal governments as your customers for the next two decades, or at least until something better comes along.

Snapchat’s purchase of looksery for $150M has pushed the app into a position of strength. It gives them the ability to scan people’s faces and detect certain features, such as eyes, noses, and mouths. Although the actual content of the users pictures is not captured, the data about the content may very well be stored for later use to recognize a user’s face for whatever purpose necessary. Although we cannot confirm that, it is certainly plausible.

Try to imagine a world where a man-hunt is underway, and the suspect is caught on video somehow, or it’s believed they have a personal snapchat account. Given their information in a database, the world and it’s app users could effectively provide more information in a few clicks than a police unit could gather in 24 hours. This could include facial features, friend or users they see, their last location, their next location, etc. etc.

See what I mean?

If history repeats itself, like it usually does, we’re about to go through another major shift in the way companies do business and the way the world views them. The only difference, is the currency.