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Facebook acquires Instagram

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Re: Facebook acquires Instagram

#221

Post by narrow »

kposehn wrote: post #169

So, I found something very interesting in Mark Zuckerberg's post about acquiring Instagram: > we're committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people. Facebook has always integrated whatever it purchased (that I know of) very tightly into the core…

Very bold + smart move on Facebook's part. Google should've taken similar step when it approached Path. Am a Google fan, but what's unfortunate is that social would be totally different by the time it successfully builds G+ to look like Facebook. This is should be the time to invite folks at Path/Pinterest to the negotiation table, if anything Wallstreet won't think it's stupid...Facebook just did it.

Re: Facebook acquires Instagram

#224

Post by ChuckMcM »

This is an interesting take:

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-why-face...

Which basically has Facebook buying them because of the social traction. Suggesting that perhaps they did not want this to be part of Google+ which has a lot of pictures but not the same as Instagram does with the social connection.

Re: Facebook acquires Instagram

#225

Post by jcitme »

MaysonL wrote: post #150
marcamillion wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahhh....good point. That does change the formula a bit, but even still...what's the likely 1 year return on pre-IPO FB stock? 3X if so much? I doubt it. Anyway, it's better than 2X, so I guess they can't be pissed.

But, quite possibly, it could be .5X, or .25X... Current FB valuation is somewhere around 25X revenue ...

Honestly, in the tech industry, a 25 P/E ratio is yawned at.

Re: Facebook acquires Instagram

#227

Post by celebration »

jonursenbach wrote: post #39
Toddward wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a jump from the $500 million valuation they were shooting for last week[1]. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/08/no-filter-required-instagra...

Wonder if there was a bidding war between FB and Google that caused it to double off of that.

It's interesting that alot of people are concerned with FB vs Google. My initial thought when hearing about this deal was that FB could be more worried about Twitter. In my personal experience, many people will share instagram photos on twitter rather than Facebook as it comes across as less "spammy" to share photos frequently. Certainly, IMO, the subscribe feature that FB introduced last year was a reaction to the celebrity cult on Twitter. Granted, Mark claims that the acquisition of instagram will not affect the ability to share to other social networks, but I'm sure they will try to make FB the preferred platform to post photos as a daily update. It will be interesting to see if Twitter suffers a drop in photo sharing as a result.

Re: Facebook acquires Instagram

#228

Post by waterlesscloud »

achompas wrote: post #181
georgespencer wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is very reminiscent of Google/YouTube circa 2006. In that it was a startup acquired by a big company? Yep. > When Google bought YT it was a small team of people and a pretty nascent product that people really loved, and the usage numbers were out of control. Like most startup acquisitions, the team size is relatively small and there is significant traction in the market with headroom to mature their footprint.…

Instagram is a photo service in a sea of other photo services. You're mischaracterizing Instagram. It's not "a photo service," it's the photo service. 30M iOS users plus 1M new Android users in 12 hours. [0] Instagram is the main mobile photo app. With this purchase, Facebook strengthens their mobile position the way Google strengthened their content position with YT. The acquisitions are very similar. (edited for a…

I suspect the main photo app is the default android camera, by a long long long looooooong distance.

Re: Facebook acquires Instagram

#229

Post by zmitri »

kposehn wrote: post #189
untog wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sort of did it with Beluga- it became "Facebook Messenger" but was never integrated into the main app. At the time I was confused as to why they'd do that, but if you think of it as a replacement for the stock "Messages" app, and Instagram for "Camera" then it all starts to come together.

Good point - though they did eliminate the brand with Beluga, and they probably won't with Instagram. That could change though. Besides messaging and photos, I'm thinking that few things are left as halo products around Facebook. There's no reason for a "games" app - to me, at least - but there might be logic in acquiring something like Turntable.fm for music.

I like this thread of reasoning. Also ties into the whole "Facebook" phone. If they were to build one, it's possible it would be android based so maybe that's why they were just waiting for the android app. I was thinking Spotify for the music given all the ties to FB, but may be too big now.

Re: Facebook acquires Instagram

#230

Post by dkrich »

marcamillion wrote: post #96
Toddward wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a jump from the $500 million valuation they were shooting for last week[1]. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/08/no-filter-required-instagra...

I think the mere fact that they just raised $50M @ $500M valuation is the reason that this price is so high. Those investors in that round had to at least double their money...if the price was indeed $1B, that's all they did. Just 2X. Although, the argument can be made that a 2X return in 1 - 2 months isn't bad...but then again, VC funds don't have a 2 month life, so over the long-term value (i.e. 10 years most-times…

Are you joking? You don't think a 100% gain is good for a 1-2 month timeframe? The most successful hedge funds in the world have money thrown at them if they can average 50% gains over the course of a year. And that is an outstanding year!

I realize the economics of hedge funds and VC funds are different in that VC's take a shotgun approach and hope that one out of ten investments makes up for all the losers, but on any single investment a 2x return is outstanding. On the surface it looks like the founders got screwed nicely on this one.

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