> the value prop was "you can be yourself when your parents and boss aren't in the audience"

If that's the value prop, what were people willing to pay for that value?

I think, instead, getting sponsored stories in front of eyeballs is the service being provided to the paying customers.

I'm glad Snap figured out a way to profitability (and what do I know as an outsider looking in), but they don't have as much good demographic info as say Facebook, so they can't for instance show men's shaving ads to men only, which I recall made their sponsored stories very "most common denominator". I no longer use Snapchat and I used to be a daily user maybe 4 years ago.