Live data from Hacker News

Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

bloomberg.com

261–270 of 394 posts

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#261
post #48

I've long had a theory (maybe it's not that revolutionary) that part of Instagram's success is it allowed people a free pass to be vain and show off-y. On Facebook, it was a bit stigmatized to post a picture of an expensive purchase, amazing house interior, fancy vacation, or workout picture of your physique. However, it's the entire point of Instagram. Couple that in with all the brands and other accounts of inspira…

http://charlescosta.net/2014/04/how-the-seven-deadly-sins-dr... tl;dr — Every successful social startup should bend, but not completely violate, one or more social taboos, e.g. one of the 7 deadly sins. Edit: When designing www.fwdeveryone.com, we purposely incorporated Pav's theory by building the platform around the taboo of getting involved in other people's relationships, in this case by letting people read (and…

> Spotify allows consumers to binge on music for a flat fee, however it is crucial to note that the musicians in this case significantly lose out on revenue.

As a side note, it amuses me to see this repeated so often, given that it's not true. If you do the math, Spotify pays about the same as a radio play. You just have to remember that each radio play goes out to a few hundred thousand to a few million people each time.

The reason artists don't like Spotify is not because they pay poorly, it's because they pay fairly. When you get a radio play, it's assumed that all the people the station reaches listened to the song. Spotify knows exactly how many people listened to a song, and pay accordingly. Unpopular artists don't like this because they get accurate counts.

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is every user really worth $100 though? How many adverts would I need to click or watch to make up that number?

Doesn't work like that. Return rates on assets average about 6% or so. i.e., if you invest $100, you expect a $6 annual income. In other words, a $100b investment would expect a $6b annual income. Take average PE ratios for example, about 15 (so 6.6% earnings as a percentage of market cap). That would require about $6 per user per year in profit. Facebook is at $6 average revenue per user (ARPU) right now, but >$25 f…

Nice back-of-the-envelope analysis. But just wanted to let you know, the ARPU numbers are per quarter, not per year! For Q1’2018, from the official earnings report, has worldwide ARPU at $5.53 for that quarter. In US, for Q1, it was $23.59 ARPU.

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#263
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd feel bad for the employees who took unnecessary dilution less than a week before instagram was bought by facebook. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/instagram#section-lo...

I feel jealous of Sequoia VC's who managed to double their money in 4 days.

Yes, very suspect behavior.

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#264
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Print & TV ads don’t stalk me everywhere I go nor steal my personal information so I don’t mind. They are also vetted by the publisher to weed out bad actors so there’s a low risk of scamming. Web ads, on the other hand...

None of that speaks to the quality of the product being advertised.

Vetting by the publisher at least sets a minimum bar that isn’t there with web.

I don’t see obvious scams, phishing or malware being advertised on TV or print, but I saw a lot of them back when I was on Facebook, and even reporting them didn’t do anything.

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#265
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're feeding the adtech privacy-invading world which has tons of negatives for society. As an analogy: "I shop at Walmart and find products I actually appreciate. What's wrong with that?" The answer isn't simple, and shaming individual consumers isn't a solution anyway. Among the biggest problems with ads are that when they are the primary economic model for these services, they will tweak everything to favor paid…

> tons of negatives for society Can you expand on this? I also can't really parse what your second paragraph is trying to say. How do businesses that rely on ads undermine organic product discovery, and what conflict of interests could they have?

In brief:

1. Products reliant on advertising for revenue are incentivized to increase the amount of ads shown (per user and in total). This leads to product strategy which prioritizes growth and engagement above all. The line between "highly engaging" and "addictive" products becomes very thin, arguably disappearing entirely.

2. In order to provide highly targeted ads, companies must necessarily collect, store and organize a tremendous amount of data on their users. We have seen over and over again that this data can then be requested, stolen or tapped by governments, hostile actors and other powerful organizations for nefarious purposes without the consent of the user.

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you could stretch spotify into musical pleasure greed .. although .. that would be stretching it

I guess people pirating music is about greed, then being content with spotify instead because it's easier is about sloth.

re Piracy, its Pride -- for the technical challenge of getting something gratis. the fact it cost money ('greed') doesn't factor into it. Proud of the ability to acquire at no cost to the individual.

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#267

I am quite privacy conscious. I have deleted my FB account. On principle, I dislike targeted ads, user tracking, etc. BUT, I hate to admit this, the ads I get in Instagram are the most relevant I have ever gotten. I actually look forward to them, to discover new products. They are perfectly tailored to me. Dammit.

You're going to get ads. To try to fight against the very existence of advertising is quixotic to the point of being sad. Why would you not want them to be relevant to you?

As a consumer, I would much prefer ads that are carefully tailed to my interests - software, fitness, general aviation - than see wildly different ads on the same platform, or the same 2-3 high paying ads for the latest garbage CBS sitcom. As a business owner, I would much rather pay $10-12 per click on one of my ads that is highly targeted to demographics, income, technology use, browsing history (of my sites, re-targeting etc) than pay $0.10 per click on a completely dumb ad with insight into who is actually clicking.

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#268

I am quite privacy conscious. I have deleted my FB account. On principle, I dislike targeted ads, user tracking, etc. BUT, I hate to admit this, the ads I get in Instagram are the most relevant I have ever gotten. I actually look forward to them, to discover new products. They are perfectly tailored to me. Dammit.

I was targeted by an ad for those Gravity Blankets (as I'm sure many others were). I bought one as a gift for my SO. The whole time I was looking at the Gravity Blanket website, I was thinking to myself "dammit, they got me." What I was even more impressed by is that after I bought one, I never saw another Gravity Blanket ad again.

I've never thought about that last bit until now. Do you think the ad targeting is being updated with actual purchasers on such a regular basis, or is that baked into whatever tracking cookie(s) were used, e.g. the FB pixel?

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#269
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't wait for that to become an illegal trade. Why would that ever happen? How could that ever happen? That would destroy everything (note: hyperbole) of value currently offered for free on the internet.

Everything of value can be paid for. The worth of an ad impression or click is measured in fractions of cents and the adds up to peanuts per month. Publishers can just charge those peanuts directly and I’ll be happy to pay up (plus they’ll get more without the dozens of middlemen in the advertising/cancer industry). But seems like publishers are greedy and want more than what the ads pay them, so that’s why subscript…

But then you have to maintain dozens to thousands of micropayment relationships. I'm not willing to do that.

Re: Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

#270

I am quite privacy conscious. I have deleted my FB account. On principle, I dislike targeted ads, user tracking, etc. BUT, I hate to admit this, the ads I get in Instagram are the most relevant I have ever gotten. I actually look forward to them, to discover new products. They are perfectly tailored to me. Dammit.

I haven't received any relevant ads yet but I have noticed that more and more ads are being shoved into my feed. It feels like there's an ad every 5 or 6 posts, it's a bit annoying, and I find myself checking into Instagram less often. I wish I could pay a fee to get rid of ads and get a reverse chronological feed.

I do wish Twitter, FB, IG etc offered a no-ad subscription to users. Charge folks 3-4x the expected per-person revenue and it's a win-win, right?

The only thing I can think of that would make them not do this is that maybe the folks most likely to pay $15/mo not to see advertisements are the same folks advertisers most want to get in front of. Expendable income and willing to pay money for convenience and personal taste.

Post reply on HN