SNAP HAS STRUCTURED ITS DEAL TO ENSURE CONTROL.

The stock surged 30 per cent in July 2013, after Facebook posted revenue and profit for the second quarter that beat estimates.

Now, Facebook has about 1.2 billion daily active users on its flagship platform and 1.2 billion monthly on its messaging tool WhatsApp. Facebook’s Instagram introduced a video-reel feature — similar to Snapchat’s stories — that already has 150 million daily users.

Twitter’s a different story. The micro-blogging site priced its shares above the marketed range in November 2013 and the stock climbed 73 per cent in its first day of trading. The company then stumbled through its first few quarters, failing to show consistent user growth and trying to get investors to switch focus to different metrics.

A year and a half after its IPO, shares took a dive when

Snap posted a net loss of US$515 million last year, according to the IPO prospectus, shelling out cash to infrastructure providers including Google and for research and development. That compares with a loss of US$382 million the previous year. Revenue climbed almost seven-fold in 2016, to US$404 million from US$59 million.

Quarterly average revenue per user on a global basis, a key metric showing how the company makes money from user engagement, climbed to US$1.05 in the fourth quarter of 2016 from 31 cents in the year-earlier period.

Snap’s unique share structure means management is asking investors to place outsize trust in their decisionmaking. While other companies, including Alphabet and Facebook, also have multiclass shares that ensure control