Nobody Knows ⇥ buzzfeed.com

Mat Honan, Buzzfeed:

We did once. We believed it about IBM and we believed it about Microsoft and Google and Apple and Amazon. But what do we believe it about today? Is it Snapchat? Is it Uber? Is it Facebook? (It is probably Facebook.) Is a chat app really worth billions of dollars? Really? Well, sure. It is because people say it is.

So what happens when they say it isn’t?

Anyone who pretends to know the future is fooling you. Or themself. We are barely muddling our way through the present.

Proved today, with the “sunsetting” of Secret:

Alexis Ohanian, a founder of Reddit who invested in Secret, said at the time that it showed signs of being a contender for the future of social networking beyond Facebook. “Apps like Secret become an outlet for people to speak honestly about things that would otherwise result in career damage,” Mr. Ohanian said. He did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.