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When Zuckerberg Asserted Control, Instagram’s Founders Chafed

nytimes.com

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Re: When Zuckerberg Asserted Control, Instagram’s Founders Chafed

#111

Post by appleiigs »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #94
quickthrower2 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone with say ~$2M (give or take a magnitude) could easily say no to more money and be pretty happy, but humans being what they are...

Hell no, are you crazy! The average Joe needs at least 2.5-3M to retire by 65, let alone 20s or 30s. That number needs upped an order of magnitude. And I'm sure there's plenty of people that would say my number needs upped an order of magnitude too.

A bit of math: $3MM x 5% annual return = 150K. On top of that, you could start spending the principal when you get older. Compare that to median household income of US of $60K.

Re: When Zuckerberg Asserted Control, Instagram’s Founders Chafed

#112

Post by naravara »

Apocryphon wrote: post #55
naravara wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook would have leveraged its user base and clout to smother them in the crib. This is why they ought to be one of the first targets for anti-trust regulation. Any company that can leverage its market size to kill competition, irrespective of the quality of their product, needs to be taken down a peg. Google and Amazon should be close behind. And Apple needs to be put on notice. It's not even that those 3 compani…

While you're not wrong from a regulatory standpoint, I think consumer product-wise both Instagram and Snapchat were among the strongest challengers to Facebook as far as insurgent social media networks went. If they had merged- well, the leadership would be dysfunctional, but it would have been very entertaining to see Facebook on the defensive.

> I think consumer product-wise both Instagram and Snapchat were among the strongest challengers to Facebook as far as insurgent social media networks went.

Maybe. I feel like one of the issues with a lot of start-ups is that the engineers who build them and happen on the ideas don't have the business instincts to outmaneuver bigger, well-funded challengers. And when they bring on VC funding or people into their companies who do have those skills, they inevitably push them to the same sorts of unfriendly monetization and invasive schemes that the big players have. Very few people have the political acumen to tell investors to STFU the way people like Jobs or Bezos were able to, so they're just open to predation by VCs.

Re: When Zuckerberg Asserted Control, Instagram’s Founders Chafed

#113

Post by fipple »

40acres wrote: post #20

I'm not sure that Facebook using Instagram as a way to funnel people back to Facebook is a great strategy. Companies need to be willing to cannibalize themselves or someone will do it for them. I don't know if Zuck had the foresight at the time, but Instagram has obviously been an amazing hedge against apps like Snapchat. People like Instagram and Snapchat partly because they are less formal than Facebook, most users…

It is a great strategy because a user scrolling Facebook for one hour generates more ad revenue than a user scrolling Instagram for three hours

Re: When Zuckerberg Asserted Control, Instagram’s Founders Chafed

#114

Post by fierro »

40acres wrote: post #20

I'm not sure that Facebook using Instagram as a way to funnel people back to Facebook is a great strategy. Companies need to be willing to cannibalize themselves or someone will do it for them. I don't know if Zuck had the foresight at the time, but Instagram has obviously been an amazing hedge against apps like Snapchat. People like Instagram and Snapchat partly because they are less formal than Facebook, most users…

imagine being shocked to discover something you already knew

Re: When Zuckerberg Asserted Control, Instagram’s Founders Chafed

#115

Post by cjhopman »

zamber wrote: post #73
tchalla wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know if Zuck had the foresight at the time, but Instagram has obviously been an amazing hedge against apps like Snapchat. I wish all of us have the "foresight" to give away a "free" data-security VPN app to "protect" browsing and keep the user "safe". You can then surreptitiously use the traffic to for competitor intelligence and buy them off [0]. [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-onavo-gives-socia…

When they bought Onavo I didin't see that coming. Thought they wanted to assimilate it with the brand in some way. Thanks for the insight.

Really? That surprises me considering that Onavo was doing that well before Facebook bought them: https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/08/onavo-insights/

Re: When Zuckerberg Asserted Control, Instagram’s Founders Chafed

#116

Post by zamber »

cjhopman wrote: post #115
zamber wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they bought Onavo I didin't see that coming. Thought they wanted to assimilate it with the brand in some way. Thanks for the insight.

Really? That surprises me considering that Onavo was doing that well before Facebook bought them: https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/08/onavo-insights/

I came from the context of data compression apps (worked on one). Before the Onavo acquisition FBs internet.org was on full blast. Made sense FB would want to incorporate compression with it. Looks like it was just a smoke screen.

Onavlo from the get-go looked like a data harvesting operation though. The app was clunky at best, the compression lacking.

Re: When Zuckerberg Asserted Control, Instagram’s Founders Chafed

#117

Post by maceurt »

appleiigs wrote: post #111
ImprovedSilence wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell no, are you crazy! The average Joe needs at least 2.5-3M to retire by 65, let alone 20s or 30s. That number needs upped an order of magnitude. And I'm sure there's plenty of people that would say my number needs upped an order of magnitude too.

A bit of math: $3MM x 5% annual return = 150K. On top of that, you could start spending the principal when you get older. Compare that to median household income of US of $60K.

That is assuming no interest rate, and that the economy keeps going the way it is going. Also, that is before capital gains tax and/or income tax. Plus it assumes that the economy stays the way it is right now.
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