"Messaging apps"—which bring all the computing power of AIM to your smartphone—are so very in right now. The problem is, most of them don't make any money. But what if your buddy list were filled with advertisers? That's the plan.

If Path cannot be Snapchat, then it shall be the world's 9,000th messaging app. Dave Morin just spent some of his shady new funding to acquire a startup called TalkTo. Like the saying goes, you gotta spend your investors' money to lose your investors' money.

#Followateen is not just a hashtag, it's a business model. Kik, one of the apps competing to be your backchannel of choice, has ridden "teen interest" to 100 million users. According to CNET, "Youth in the Western world are gravitating" to the app because you don't have to give a phone number.