1897 Snap 'n Two

There's an old adage---well, as old as the internet: "If it's free, you aren't the customer, you're the product." I thought of that when I was doing my previous commentary on the hot new app known as Snapchat.
Snapchat offers a "free" service whereby you can send automatically self-destructing pictures of your life or person to friends. Naturally, this has been a boon to the sexting crowd, as now those drunken pictures of lascivious flirtation are only as lasting as a 10-second countdown.
A peepshow app.
No word whether the paid version comes with a set of Mardi Gras beads.
But you gotta ask: What does Snapchat the company get out of all this? Where do they intend to monetize your ill-considered buff-oonery?
Will they, like Facebook-infected Instagram, change their privacy policy suddenly and say that though they don't "own" your posted content, they can still use it and sell it however they wish?
Is the software that dissolves your picture reversible?
And don't be too sure your photos are dissolving. The illustrating picture in the article I read about Snapchat was a frozen screenshot. I'm sure there's already an anti-Snapchat dissolver app out there right now that personal paparazzi types have downloaded to their smartypants phones.
Lastly, who's to say Snapchat itself isn't actually storing all the photos somewhere? For future sale to the highest bidder. As every celebrity knows, take no nude pictures anywhere. They will end up online and in the tabloids.
So if you're thinking of being famous, or don't want to involuntarily be so, don't take the picture at all.
Before you drink and post, that's a snap judgment you should make. Or when it returns to haunt you, it'll give new meaning to the term "snappy comeback."
America, ya gotta love it.