
Instagram is acquired by Facebook - lewispb
http://blog.instagram.com/post/20785013897/instagram-facebook
======
homosaur
Can someone please tell me how Instagram's actual content is worth anything?
We're talking about photo-filtered cell phone camera shots here. Facebook
doesn't need a user acquisition ploy.

I guess maybe it's a move to keep users in Facebook, but I'd be willing to bet
a million bucks that almost everyone is discovering Instagram content via
Facebook or Twitter.

Seems like mostly a huge waste of cash.

~~~
juliano_q
IMO Instagram had a huge potential to be the next big social network. I think
Mark noticed it too and bought before it became too big.

~~~
homosaur
You might be right that was their thinking, but it's a long trek from photo
sharing to ubiquitous social network.

~~~
furyofantares
Photo sharing is something that everyone is trying desperately to solve. When
I open the G+ app on my iPhone it wants to upload all the new photos it can
find on the phone. I would imagine the Facebook app does the same thing, but I
don't know. The OS has cloud storage for photos baked in. When I plug the
phone into my computer, Dropbox wants to automatically find and upload the
photos.

Everyone is trying to get into this, and for good reason, I think.

My family is filled with people that always have access to a camera and to the
internet via their phone. We're spread out geographically and don't get to see
each other very often. There is a HUGE opportunity to bring us closer together
that would be greatly valuable to us. I would love it if part of our daily
routine included looking at all of the photos anyone in the family has taken
in the last day.

There are lots of solutions for us to do this, but for whatever reason,
nothing has taken hold. Maybe everything is too manual, or maybe social
networks are still focused too much on the browser and not enough on mobile.
But for whatever reason, it's not happening for us. I suspect we are not alone
and I think the explosion of people trying to get me to buy into putting my
photos on their free service is indicative of this.

~~~
Splines
> _Photo sharing is something that everyone is trying desperately to solve._

Honestly - is this not a solved problem? I have a hard enough time _choosing_
what service to use to share pictures on, there's not exactly a dearth of
services in this space.

~~~
furyofantares
It's something everyone knows how to do from a technology standpoint, which is
why so many services are trying to do it. But from a user experience
standpoint I don't see anyone really nailing it. And I think for this you
really want to nail it even for people who are not very good at all at using
technology.

~~~
tjoff
I think the problem stems from that no one actually have any pictures they
want to share on a daily basis (exception might be pictures of babies).
Instagram solved it by inventing shareable pictures of nothing.

While I can appreciate the idea of a "daily picture" (or whatever) in a more
diary-form this is a completely different beast than a family photo / vacation
photo / group activity photo etc., such photos only get better with time where
an instagram is useless a social-minute after it was shot.

~~~
brlewis
I've got the photos-that-get-better-with-time problem nailed, but I don't
think it can be as viral as daily-nothing apps. Nostalgia tends to be more
individual; daily-nothing is entirely social.

------
huhtenberg
_Sound of a good app flushing down the toilet_

Uninstalled. Congrats to founders though, well executed, guys.

~~~
JackWebbHeller
Why? Just on principal that as soon as a big company buys a little company,
the product will inevitably get worse?

Nothing has changed for the end user yet, has it?

~~~
Bud
Yes. The instant Facebook bought them, user trust went out the window. There
is active, intense, well-founded mistrust by users regarding Facebook's
ability or desire to protect user privacy in any way.

Indeed, anyone paying attention can see that Facebook actively and
systematically attacks user privacy. Instagram just became part of that.

So yes, something has changed.

~~~
hoverkraft
What exactly is it about Instagram that requires excellent user privacy
protection? It's twitter for photos.

It never ceases to amaze me how much lip service people pay to the need for
privacy on social networks that are fundamentally based on the premise of
broadcasting your private life to a fairly large audience. If you REALLY don't
want that photo of the sunset that you took to be seen by the wrong person,
why post it online in the first place?

~~~
Bud
I see the following flaws in your comment:

1) Twitter is inherently much more public than Instagram. 2) "to a fairly
large audience" is your personal assumption. Not all people use social media
that way. 3) Photo of a sunset? That sounds like your being obtuse. Obviously
many photos are much more personal than a sunset. 4) To be seen "by the wrong
person"? Again, seems obtuse to me. The larger concern is the photo being
permanently stored by the wrong corporation(s), to the eternal detriment of
user privacy. 5) You are assuming that the user him/herself posts all photos
of a given user. That is obviously not the case. Your photos, or photos
picturing you, can be posted by others as well.

Suffice it to say, many users who do enjoy social media nevertheless do not
want Facebook using everything they post for the next 25 years for marketing
purposes. They don't want that content sold to other corporations, either. And
there are many other possible legitimate privacy concerns.

~~~
edwinnathaniel
Seems like you have your own "personal assumption as well".

It all depends on which "circle" or "bubbles" we live in.

In my mind, your arguments are flawed: my friends shared everything. My
friends tweet their instagram food pictures. My friends posted their instagram
sunset pictures on Facebook (seriously, I'm not joking).

Many of my friends and their friends enjoy social media and use Facebook
heavily almost for everything including selling dresses, cupcakes, foods,
services, shoes, lingeries, etc.

I'm not done yet: some of my female friends do have conversation about
lingeries that they were tagged to on Facebook in Facebook.

Based on my "bubble", your "bubble" is the minority: a very small group of
people who seem to be overly concerned with nothing.

It's probably cultural.

~~~
Steko
"your arguments are flawed: my friends shared everything"

(1) that doesn't respond to his argument.

(2) no they didn't share _everything_. Presumably they shared what they wanted
to.

And here's the problem with Facebook, explicitly: If you upload something to
facebook by mistake and it's something you didn't want to share, Facebook
winks and says "ok we deleted it" but this has been shown false too many times
for users to trust that they actually have control over their own content.

------
chbrown
The front page of HN is a brilliant example of why you should use the active
voice when the passive is unnecessary. 403 points (active) vs. 150 points
(passive).

Great A&B testing, guys.

~~~
lewispb
No worries ;) To be fair the facebook announcement was posted 10 minutes prior
to the instagram.com post and so generated discussion quicker.

------
nextparadigms
For those of you that are looking for alternatives now:

[http://lifehacker.com/5899690/dont-bother-with-instagram-
her...](http://lifehacker.com/5899690/dont-bother-with-instagram-here-are-
five-better-alternatives-for-android)

------
ja27
I know they're saying they won't do another acquisition like this, but why not
Pinterest too? It would make more sense to me than Instagram.

[http://www.privco.com/research/top-5-reasons-facebook-
should...](http://www.privco.com/research/top-5-reasons-facebook-should-
acquire-pinterest-and-quickly)

------
juliano_q
After only one week using Instagram for Android it was already my favorite
network. Congrats for the Instagram team, but I cant deny that I just lost
much of my sympathy for the network, since I can´t stand the way that Facebook
handles privacy anymore.

------
peacemaker
Well done to the guys at Instagram, they've accomplished a lot in 2 years I
think.

~~~
lewispb
Absolutely. It'll be interesting to see how Facebook take Instagram forward,
and how features from Instagram will make there way into Facebook's photo
product.

------
mendable
This Wired article[1] states that the first co-founder owned 40% of the
company and the second co-founder owned 10% of the company at the time of
acquisition.

This might suggest they started out with an 80/20 split.

Why? How did that split come about?

[1] [http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/04/facebook-buys-
instagr...](http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/04/facebook-buys-instagram/)

~~~
speedracr
Kevin Systrom went all in at an earlier point. Discussed in more detail by the
two of them here:
<http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2745> (video)

------
asselinpaul
If photo filters are worth this much, I'm in the wrong business.

~~~
dasil003
30,000,000 people using _anything_ has got to be worth at least 9 figures.

~~~
tghw
$33 per user? That's optimistic.

~~~
malandrew
$33 per user could make sense if this was a defensive acquisition as other
HNers have suggested.

If G+ bought Instagram and it made enough of a difference in G+ activity to
make G+ competitive with Facebook, I could see how it could knock $1 billion
or more off Facebook's IPO price.

Remember, it's 30 million of the more active social network users. These are
the same type of core users that Facebook had back in its early days that
helped attract the other 750 million users it has.

~~~
optymizer
My app has 7 users. Can I haz $200?

~~~
dvdhsu
Is Google likely to acquire you? If they do, is it likely the acquisition will
lower Facebook's IPO price?

------
cnbeuiwx
Oh crap.... Facebook got their dirty hands on this one. :(

------
Rev55
I wonder if Instagram has any patents that can be used in Facebook's patent
war with Yahoo.

As a mobile social network, Instagram has no equal in the photo category.

It would be foolish to think that after a year and half a tech company with vc
backing would not have at least 5 solid patents that could be used for
defensive purposes.

Even if Instagram has patents that would in some way affect any yahoo holdings
(specifically flickr), I don't see a $1 Billion value.

~~~
jwegan
They have only been around for 2 years so they certainly have not been granted
any patents. It is very unlikely they have even filed for any patents. Most
startups will only file patents in their first few years if patents are a
critical part of defending their business. Patents take a lot of time & money
with very little payoff (they mainly protect you from being sued). It is not a
good investment of a startups resources to be filing patents unless the
patents are critical to the success of the business.

------
bbayer
I think it is ridiculous. No need for user base, no need for technology. Even
no serious business model. Anything I missed?

------
daimyoyo
Does anyone know if Instagram will require facebook credentials to log in now?
One major reason I have enjoyed Instagram is that it's a separate network away
from facebook etc.

------
cantbecool
The big question is for how much?

~~~
peacemaker
One billion dollars. Seriously.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
I don't want to live on this planet anymore

~~~
narrator
Ha... Want to get more depressed? Alexa reports that Instagram is ranked as
the 6,534th most popular site on the Internet. Compete.com said it had 331,529
users last month. Seriously, what the heck? What kind of reality distortion
field did they have to come up with to convince the Facebook guys that this
was worth $1 billion dollars?

~~~
waterlesscloud
What's Zynga.com ranked at?

~~~
narrator
740

------
azarias
Congrats guys. This is really exciting stuff!

~~~
azarias
The last exciting acquisition I remember is Mint. One of those "must work
hard" events.

------
gcb
And now google will notice that it needs decent photo integration on plus and
do more innovation there than instagram ever dreamed.

or it will stagnate everything in the market like youtube did to video (and is
slowly trying to repair recently).

------
mahoneyta
Just get deja mi instead, way better app anyways!

------
gfosco
F*ck Facebook... evil corporation of evil. Harbinger of a world without
privacy, it dooms us all.

~~~
astrodust
Although I agree, this goes without saying.

