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Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

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

#381

Post by skinnymuch »

mac01021 wrote: post #350
austenallred wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I spend $100,000/month advertising on Facebook and Instagram, so it depends on what your definition of “bubble” is

What kind of product/service are you selling? Have you seen much indication that that has been money well spent?

I run ecommerce right now on them in a similar amount.

Before I’d run different affiliate offers through them. Though back then for those, Instagram wasn’t that big. Might start again if the opportunity works out.

The returns are good or it would be crazy to put that much money into the ads.

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

#382

Post by skinnymuch »

tim333 wrote: post #143
394549 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Say what you want about Zuckerberg but the guy was well ahead of his time and could see how things would evolve and what tick with people brains. Did he really predict that, or did he just see an upcoming potential competitive threat and buy it? I feel bad for the founders of Instagram. They could have been the next Zuckerberg(s) (as Instagram seems to be taking over as Facebook seems to be starting to fade), but i…

Reading the discussion at the time there wasn't too much prediction required: >A few days ago it was rumored to be valued at $500 million. A few months ago it was $300 million. Its last round — just a year ago — valued the company at $100 million. It was already the hot thing when he bought it. ( https://gigaom.com/2012/04/09/here-is-why-did-facebook-bough... )

The few days ago $500M round was just done because it was known Facebook was acquiring it. You can’t really count that. That was just VCs quickly doubling their money.

The other numbers are good, but then other companies also grow at similar rates. How come Instagram is the $100B valued company with 1B users and Whatsapp has over 1.5B users? And both are growing still. You’d think there would be another company coming at them.

For Whatsapp as a messenger the only service close to them is Messenger with around 1.4B users (you could say WeChat or Line/KakaoTalk as well though they are mostly popular in east Asia only). And Messenger is a sister product.

YouTube is a similar knock out success. Huge mindshare beyond its huge numbers, but it isn’t a profit machine like Instagram.

So it’s just Facebook that controls the 4 biggest social networks/messengers outside China. Along with some of them being the fastest growing services as well to this day.

All of this is to again say it wasn’t completely obvious Instagram would become this big. Other companies also grow and get valued highly quickly. And almost no other companies or services get as big as Instagram, which is still growing.

Finally, the zeitgeist at the time of the purchase was of shock at the price tag. Almost no one thought it was worth the billion dollar price.

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

#383

Post by skinnymuch »

pc86 wrote: post #270
criddell wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ta…

Yeah your second paragraph is the problem. Though more importantly, most people who can pay won’t be paying $10-20 a month for a service that is otherwise free. And now the service has to provide this paid tier to a tiny portion of their user base.

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

#384

Post by skinnymuch »

Rjevski wrote: post #206
cm2012 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because of the amazing data Facebook and Instagram have to create anonymous targeting audiences with. Source: I spend millions on FB and IG ads per month.

Is your product that bad that you have to spend millions on ads just to get people interested in it? If I had to pay millions to shove my product in people’a faces because that’s the only way to get them to use it, I would reconsider whether my product should even exist.

You realize that they are likely making a profit on that millions in spend. If the product is so bad, that normally wouldn’t be possible.

You seem to have a very misaligned thought on why advertising occurs and why it works, especially for a relative small timer like the poster (since a couple million is a drop in the bucket for IG/FB).

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

#385

Post by skinnymuch »

Rjevski wrote: post #256
soared wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> raises some concerns about whether the product provides any value at all. How? Spending on fb/insta is no different than print & tv. Air BnB ads are probably 5x as effective on FB than on a billboard, how does that say anything about their product?

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...

What does any of this have to do with the how good or bad the advertised product is? Especially of the original poster?

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

#386

Post by skinnymuch »

chemochemo wrote: post #228
throwaway427 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really care for hilighting peoples past skepticism but this guy literally asked for it: --- [...] This is not going to be one of the best tech acquisitions of the next decade. YouTube helped to propel Google into content. It also helped to commoditise web video in a massive way: reminiscent of the way which Google commoditised search (YouTube is probably just short of being a byword for online video at this p…

To be fair, it isn't 2022 yet.

Instagram is supposed to be at around 1.75B users and triple or quadruple their current revenue by then. Of course anything can happen, but chances are the user growth and revenue growth are going to happen. At least Instagram is only potentially worth $100B right now with only $500M a month in revenue.

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

#387

Post by [deleted] »

skinnymuch wrote: post #377
mygo wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s quite possible to run a high-traffic app with a small staff if you have the right engineering talent and developed the infrastructure thinking about scale from the start. Before facebook bought Whatsapp they only had 5 employees. But they had the best engineers for the task at hand. In fact they’re famous for handling 2 million TCP connections on a single server due to much of their engineering decisions (includ…

WhatsApp had 50+ employees and made only tens of millions from their $1 fee. Where are you getting $1B from? It was never remotely close to $1B. FB publicly posted Whatsapp revenue from before the acquisition. It was a pittance. Whatsapp also only had a couple hundred million users back in 2014. So they’d have no way to make a billion even if they charged everyone. Which they didn’t. They barely charged anyone.

[deleted]

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

#388

Post by mygo »

xkjkls wrote: post #375
mygo wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s quite possible to run a high-traffic app with a small staff if you have the right engineering talent and developed the infrastructure thinking about scale from the start. Before facebook bought Whatsapp they only had 5 employees. But they had the best engineers for the task at hand. In fact they’re famous for handling 2 million TCP connections on a single server due to much of their engineering decisions (includ…

WhatsApp had 55 employees not 5. And additional features are going to add massive complexity and decrease your ability to scale relatively quickly. Sure, with the right engineering you might be able to run a relatively light operation if you have a feature-set well thought out, but as soon as you want to add any other thing-a-mo-bob to the operation it gets much harder.

It appears I have been given false information. Thanks for the correction.

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

#389

Post by conanbatt »

balls187 wrote: post #354
conanbatt wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow can you read this for me? I dont get it

I think you're asking me to interpret my comment. Apologies if not. The link I pasted simply had a list of Instagram's financing rounds. April 5th, 2012, Series B $50m April 9th, 2012 Purchased by FB, $1b Several days before being acquired by Facebook, Instagram raised a $50m Series B on a $500m premoney evaluation, which gave investors 10% of the company. Typically in order to grant 10% worth of preferred stock for…

I can see that as a possible scenario but without the real numbers of dilution, it might have not had such a significant impact. Nevertheless sequoia did made a bundle and that was paid either by founders or employees. There must be some sort of funny business in that deal.

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

#390

Post by seattle_spring »

Rjevski wrote: post #88
seattle_spring wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I could build Instagram in a weekend!"

Honestly though, building its functionality in a weekend is perfectly doable, the hard part is the ad tracking/stalking infrastructure that goes in the background.

Literally the attitude I was referring to. No, you unquestionably could not build Instagram in a weekend, ads or not.
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