391–394 of 394 posts
AFAIK instagram didn't make any cent. Premium filters and and ads would be the first choice, but I heard they decided to focus and grow in people loving their product.
Another big thing to deal with is: to sell or not?
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If this acquisition goes bad, Facebook goes from being worth 100 billion dollars to being worth 99 billion dollars. People don't lose their savings or retirement accounts. To me this just confirms that people who talk about bubbles now weren't here for the last real tech bubble.
FaceBook is only worth 100b on paper. It's not worth close to that. The reason this is absolutely a bubble is because you have one paper tiger buying another paper tiger with virtual paper. This is no different than the real estate cycle in L.A. or South Florida a few years ago, when people would buy and sell condos based on market potential multiple times before the condo was even finished. It all works until someon…
This is very reminiscent of Google/YouTube circa 2006. 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. They left the product mostly untouched and let it grow on its own. Though there was major criticism at the time, it is one of the best tech acquisitions of the past decade.
This feels a lot more like the 1999 "eyeballs" landgrab. There's no unique technology behind Instagram. Being popular != being valuable.
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YouTube is a content paradise though. There's tons of value there and you can sell ads against it or even charge for premium services. Where's the money in Instagram? The content is practically worthless and their only real value is in their userbase. Even though I use the Instagram client, most of the time I see photos, they come through Twitter. So that also reinforces for me that any value is in the users and not…
"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.
For a fraction[1] of that they could have cloned the software pixel-by-pixel and weaved it in with facebook in a way that the original instagram couldn't.
I have trouble believing instagram was about to turn into an 1 billion dollar threat.
[1] Understatement of the month