Om Malik says Snapchat—which is free, a potential privacy disaster, and makes zero money, in any currency, whatsoever—is "close to snagging about $100 million in new investment at a valuation nearing half a billion dollars." Let's think this through.

Facebook has already demonstrated that it can easily clone Snapchat. It wouldn't make much sense for any other company to buy Snapchat. So, worth half a billion to whom? Yahoo? Sprint? How would Snapchat possibly make money? Ads? Charging to download? Making you take photos of logos? Why wouldn't a potential buyer just rip them off? For now, none of these problems are Snapchat's—they'll be happy with the money. I'd suggest only that they use part of that $100 million to rethink privacy.