Facebook acquires Instagram • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook acquires Instagram

#281

Post by minalecs » Mon, Apr 09, 2012, 9:31 PM UTC

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 hate using the metric of downloads or users.. the most important metric that we don't get from mobile app companies is daily active users. Filters on android have become commodity, and I imagine a lot of users just installed to try and see what the hype is about.

Re: Facebook acquires Instagram

#282

Post by joelmaat » Mon, Apr 09, 2012, 9:32 PM UTC

This situation reminds me of when Facebook was worried about Twitter: most of the worry ended up being unfounded. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Facebook was eyeing Instagram, as Facebook's photo viewing UI is now fairly similar to Instagram's. But I wonder if the worry about Instagram merited the $1B exit. Either way, given how small the Instagram team is, they must feel mighty satisfied right now.

Re: Facebook acquires Instagram

#283

Post by ForrestN » Mon, Apr 09, 2012, 9:39 PM UTC

jimmyvanhalen wrote: post #149

larrys wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Where's the money in Instagram?" Preventing Instagram from developing into something that has a negative effect on Facebook. It's a "keep your enemies closer" move.

and keeping Instagram away from Google. it's a good move.

This is an excellent and important point, maybe the most insightful I've read in this thread.

Whatever value Instagram has for Facebook, it probably has at least double that value for Google, who could buy it just as easily. By paying a premium and showing major interest first, Facebook preempted an opportunity for Google to get some traction in the social space. Very smart move.

Re: Facebook acquires Instagram

#284

Post by eyeareque » Mon, Apr 09, 2012, 9:41 PM UTC

$1 billion divided by 30 million users = 33.30 dollars.

I had no idea my account was worth that much.

Re: Facebook acquires Instagram

#285

Post by tirrellp » Mon, Apr 09, 2012, 9:41 PM UTC

lucasgonze wrote: post #257

knowsnothing613 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, and Yahoo bought Flickr for hundreds of millions. And Flickr never became a profit center for yahoo. Now, Yahoo is laying off thousands of workers, and is close to dead poool, because of all its malinvestment in web1.5 (flicker, geocities, delicious, etc). Video has a higher value proposition than photos. Look @ how hard flickr has struggled turning photos into a sustainable business model. I'm comparing apples…

Flickr was in the tens of millions, on the order of $30 million. That was the blog buzz around the price, anyway.

Gonze! How are you my man?!

Re: Facebook acquires Instagram

#286

Post by larrys » Mon, Apr 09, 2012, 9:54 PM UTC

wallawe wrote: post #167

jimmyvanhalen wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and keeping Instagram away from Google. it's a good move.

But back to the original proposition, is this indicative of a bubble when you drop 1 Billion, or >1% of your estimated market cap on a preventive/defensive measure?

There are a few ways to look at this. The 1% is in cash and shares and we don't know the proportion or I haven't seen that anywhere so far.

Now to put the question in context if you have a small company that is worth, say $500,000, then 1% is $5000 you might spend that much (in cash alone yearly) as "insurance", say for property/casualty or liability. And you would pay that no matter what the business climate if you perceived a risk to your business, right?

But it could indicate a bubble simply because if the market is up people are more likely to overpay for anything because they feel very upbeat and enthusiastic about the future.

So paying a large number (and 1 billion is a large number and not trivial no matter how you slice it) would be more likely to happen in a bubble.

But there are to many variables in this that are not know to draw a definitive conclusion.

That said my feeling is we are in a period of irrational exuberance.

Re: Facebook acquires Instagram

#287

Post by lancewiggs » Mon, Apr 09, 2012, 10:08 PM UTC

nodesocket wrote: post #166

marcamillion wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 2 main reasons that I can think of: a) You don't know if the acquisition will actually happen. Therefore if it doesn't, you aren't left with nothing. b) It gives you a stronger bargaining chip to increase the price of the acquisition because you literally have a strong alternative. Instagram could tell FB to screw off, they are already getting $50M.

I wonder if the investors (Sequoia, Greylock) knew of the pending acquisition offer from FaceBook when they put forth the 50M investment? If they did, that was the easiest investment ever.

They may have brokered the deal, and at least gave credibility to the investment to make it easier for Facebook to pay the price. Beautiful result for the portfolio - we are in a bubble and flipping this so quickly means that they have $ return in the bank way before the more speculative investments.

Re: Facebook acquires Instagram

#288

Post by skeletonjelly » Mon, Apr 09, 2012, 10:11 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #246

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I need to delete my account // Surely it's already too late. They bought your data. Why do we allow companies to sell personal data on as part of the company? Should this be legislated against?

What's the alternative?

Diaspora?

Re: Facebook acquires Instagram

#289

Post by skeletonjelly » Mon, Apr 09, 2012, 10:12 PM UTC

untog wrote: post #178

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…

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.

Almost sounds like you're describing a new FacebookOS!

Re: Facebook acquires Instagram

#290

Post by skeletonjelly » Mon, Apr 09, 2012, 10:14 PM UTC

orblivion wrote: post #159

2pasc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree...but the point was not about the revenues, the point was about making sure that when you think about photos - to share or to browse(which is the most used app on Facebook), you think about Facebook. The risk of being displaced by Instagram on that crucial activity was too high for Facebook.

So Facebook is like giant a rail company in the late 1800s.

You're thinking of Valve.