I've talked previously about the growing basic human need to remove ourselves at times from social media’s public stage; and our search for new apps that will offer us a means to express ourselves freely and without regret. However our partial escape from the theater of Facebook and Twitter to what we hoped was a new digital oasis in apps like Snapchat and Secret has turned out to be a mirage. Huge and glimmering, they and others like them have failed to keep us or our moments private and safe.

If Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are the stage, then apps like Snapchat, Wickr and Confide are the new digital oasis. Places that move us from being public performers, to just being our true selves. These apps and others like them have the ability to remove the “documentary pressure” of the web and turn it back into a regular method of conversation – one that is unavailable for third parties to hear, dissect or disseminate.

I’ve written previously on new technologies or services in the content distribution space that scream about how disruptive they are, the new found efficiency they bring, or my personal favorite – the “democratization” of content they unleash. Unfortunately, when you strip away the made-for-TechCrunch adjectives, we are (in many cases) simply left with a Rube-Goldberg like contraption built for one thing and one thing only – stealing someone else’s content and monetizing it.