Generation Z doesn’t buy on Wall Street

There we go: Snapchat, or rather Snap Inc., is quoted on the stock exchange. The price of the initial public offer will be defined today at the close of trading. There is great excitement on Wall Street because this is the most anticipated technological IPO after the listing of Jack Ma’s giant, Alibaba.

Snapchat is aiming for $20 billion: it will be the IPO of an American company with a higher value since the listing on Facebook, which took place 6 years ago. The reason why this is such a rich deal is because no one, to date, has understood how to make video on mobile: Instagram has not made it; YouTube has not made it and certainly Facebook has not made it. It’s not about sharing a moving image but about allowing peopleto tell of a storyeasily. The fact that the story self-destructs after a short time generates sense of urgency; which makes everything a little more compulsive.

But how many people over the age of 30 really know – and understand – Snapchat? More and more but still few, very few. The real heritage of Snapchat are the teenagers, the z-generation, who obviously do not buy on Wall Street. For this, they must have thought in Snap Inc., you need a Snapchat – How it works. The feeling, looking at it, does not make you feel particularly youngyoung: you feel a bit like those spectators at the premiere of the Luimière brothers, ran out of the cinema seeing the locomotive arrive.

Every two or three years a new platform is created. In the beginning there was Friendster, swept away by MySpace, in turn devoured by Facebook. Then it was the turn of Instagram, the new cool kid on the block become so popular as to put in difficulty Facebook that, to avoid, bought it for 1 billion dollars. Now the new platform of the moment is Snapchat. Facebook has tried to buy it, it is said for 3 billion dollars, but Snap Inc has refused and decided to continue along its path by listing on the stock exchange. Tonight we will find out what value the market will recognize and see if Wall Street has really understood how to use this “Snapchat”.