
Instagram is "worth" more than the New York Times - ryangilbert
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/04/09/at-a-market-cap-of-950-million-the-new-york-times-is-worth-less-than-instagram/
======
kirubakaran
A glass of water can be worth more than the New York Times if Zuckerberg is
lost in the desert and you happen to have water. It can be worth even more if
Larry Page is dying of thirst at the same time and starts a bidding war.

~~~
jimmyvanhalen
correct. Instagram is "worth" $1 Billion to Facebook, but it's worth $100 to a
funeral home. But if you think about it, Instagram is worth way more than $1
billion to Google.

~~~
PakG1
Don't be too sure. I'm sure there's some innovative funeral home that would be
able to utilize Instagram to offer a way for mourners to document the mourning
process and find closure, a way that would be worth much more than $100. Maybe
not $1 billion, but more than $100 for sure. ;)

~~~
jimmyvanhalen
that's a start-up right there. :)

~~~
Tomis
Instadrama.

------
DanI-S
This whole thing has really thrown into contrast the extent to which people
conflate monetary value, societal value and the abstract concept of 'merit'.

A business is valuable to own if you think it may bring you more money in the
future, or you think that owning it will give you an advantage over your
competitors.

That's it. That's the entire thing. Nobody is trying to put a value on the
relative social impact of Instagram vs the New York Times. Facebook merely
calculated that they'll make more money as its owner than they would
otherwise.

That our culture has seen to directly associate cash value with 'intrinsic'
value is another issue entirely.

~~~
_delirium
_A business is valuable to own if you think it may bring you more money in the
future, or you think that owning it will give you an advantage over your
competitors. That's it. That's the entire thing._

I don't think that's accurate; that assumes that 100% of businessmen make 100%
of decisions purely to make more money, which I don't think is true. If you
have a big pile of money, one of the things you can do with it is buy or start
companies that you think will make you more money, but other things you can do
include buying/starting companies you think will advance your personal goals,
buying companies you'd just like to own, etc.

For example, we have a lot more wealthy tech people owning space-travel
companies than I think would be justified based on the economics alone. They
consider them valuable to own because they want to own a space-travel company.
Similarly, there is some non-zero value, beyond its projected revenues, to
owning the New York Times. I would certainly pay a non-zero amount for the
social power it would gain me to own the NYT, so there you have an existence
proof that the value of its social position is at least a few thousand
dollars. :)

~~~
DanI-S
You make a good point - there really is no way to fully disconnect the human
element in these decisions.

I do think there's a real difference between Jeff Bezos/etc founding a space-
travel company and Facebook buying Instagram, however. Although Mark
Zuckerberg is at the top, Facebook is a large organization, with likely more
complex motivations than any individual.

~~~
randallsquared
To what extent does it even make sense to speak of the "motivations" of a
group of people, insofar as they aren't unanimous? Has anyone done a study on
whether this provides any predictive power? It seems plausible to me that a
group's "motivations" are just stories about what people in the group did.

------
ForrestN
I think people are underestimating the importance of the NYT. If the NYT
suddenly disappeared tomorrow, I'd argue that, at least in the near term, it
would have far-reaching implications for the US as a society, as a political
body, and as a culture. I think it would impact the course of global events in
very real ways. The NYT, despite its market cap, is thoroughly integrated into
the fabric of the US and serves a number of very important functions.

If instantgram shut down tomorrow, it wouldn't matter at all.

In fact, I think that if Facebook shut down tomorrow it would matter less than
if the NYT did.

I have no idea if the valuations are crazy, and I don't mean to be making a
point about bubbles or anything else. I just think it might be a condition of
contemporary capitalism that "importance" and "value" are in many cases
unrelated.

~~~
eternalban
NYTimes is an instrument of the power elite. The content matter that is
interesting (culture) and relatively benign is the product of the talent (and
they can go elsewhere).

Politically, I personally would welcome the day that says RIP to NYT -- it
would be hugely helpful in getting our political system back on the track. We
desperately needed intelligent and critical oversight of the state during the
past and current decade and NYTimes completely (willfully, imo) dropped the
ball. (They completely lost all credibility post 9/11 in my eyes. Please show
me the front page headline with pictures of the huge ("tens of thousands")
anti-war demo in Washington D.C. prior to invasion of Iraq. We've all seen the
one for Egyptians ...)

~~~
jpancake
I'm sure I'll be modded into oblivion for this, but, oh well.

I'm really curious, and not trying to be snarky: how old are you?

~~~
eternalban
> how old are you?

Regardless of your stated intent, you should be aware that your query comes
across as a subtle form of ad-hominum. Let's discuss "all that is fit to
print" and not my white chest hair ..

~~~
jacques_chester
Ad hominem.

It's not an ad hominem _if_ your age has a relationship to your argument. It
may or may not, we don't know because your interlocutor hasn't followed up.

~~~
aggie
It would still be ad hominem ("against the person"), just not a fallacious
argument.

~~~
jacques_chester
I feel like we have different definitions.

I was under the impression that ad hominem is about dragging irrelevant
personal qualities into the debate.

For example: the topic is water quality. Joe Bloggs is troubled by the effects
of pollutants in tap water.

Not an ad-hom: "He owns a company which manufactures tap water filters".

Ad-hom: "He's an atheist".

~~~
epo
The meaning of ad-hominem is easy enough to lookup. Both your examples are ad-
hom, one is less relevant than the other. In neither case are you addressing
his argument rather attacking the speaker's motives or character. "How old are
you?" is both snarky and ad-hom, moreover the questioner knew he was being
snarky.

------
Turing_Machine
While I haven't been following it lately, not long ago the NYT was reported to
be worth approximately the market value of its real estate holdings (that is,
the paper itself was essentially worth nothing).

That may be shocking, but it's happening everywhere -- Newsweek was supposedly
sold for $1.00 and the assumption of its debt. I certainly wouldn't be putting
any money into print-based media.

~~~
ArbitraryLimits
Well, remember the same thing happened with all the movie studios in the late
1980s - someone sat down and calculated that the market price to buy a studio
was less than what they could get by selling all the shooting lots in Century
City to a real estate developer. This was also just a few years after the
studios freaked out that the VCR was going to put them out of business. There
_were_ a ton of takeovers of the studios after that, _but_ it's not like
movies aren't still around and still profitable. Of course, their revenue
model has changed significantly since then.

Of course, the same thing also happened to Silicon Graphics in the early 00s
and they really _are_ dead now. I'm not saying it's not a worrisome sign for
print media, just that it doesn't necessarily mean they won't make it through,
albeit with lots of changes.

~~~
dpcheng2003
It happens all the time today. Companies like Sears and Burger King have been
taken private (through leveraged buyouts) to unlock the value of their real
estate (i.e., sell them).

~~~
hessenwolf
Richard Gear's character in 'Pretty Woman' made a living out of just that; the
sum of the values of the parts of some companies is more than its market value
(Price to Book < 1).

(Then he fell in love with a red-headed hooker and decided not to break up a
ship building company, and help manage the company to build more ships
instead.)

------
endersshadow
Something's only worth what somebody else is willing to pay for it. Try buying
the NYT for $950 million one share at a time. You will actually drive the
price up, since there's displayed demand. The market cap is just the sum of
all of its shares multiplied by the last price the share traded at. It would
take considerably more to purchase the entirety of the company.

That being said, Instagram sold for an outrageous amount. But this article is
rather naive in how stock markets work or how companies are valued.

~~~
reitzensteinm
If only because every person who owns NYT stock at a $950 million market cap
expects it to go up - otherwise why hold the stock?

~~~
ebaysucks
Asset allocation is about relative performance and capital preservation in
real terms.

~~~
reitzensteinm
You're right about that. I didn't consider people buying and holding expecting
zero real returns, vs eg T-Bills which might offer negative.

But my point was that you'd be merely matching an offer that they'd already
implicitly turned down because they expect a better offer later - sell their
share of the company at the current market cap.

That can include capital preservation, e.g. maybe you'd rather have exactly
100% of your portfolio value in real terms in 20 years than 100% now, since
you believe the market will go down.

------
dpcheng2003
People dismiss this company for being just a photo-sharing site and then one
day, poof, it's worth $1bn.

Pretty much just described Facebook too.
<http://venturebeat.com/2010/07/21/fred-wilson/>

Instagram took arguably the most important part of the mobile social
process—taking photos—and made it cooler than everything else, including what
Facebook, was offering.

As for the NYT v. Instagram argument, I think we can all agree the NYT's
social value may outstrip its economic value. The outrage about the decline of
the NYT should've started when Craigslist started offering free listings.

------
whackberry
I've been in the computer business all my life. I've learned something: there
is no place on Earth where ridiculous amounts of money is spent on ideas that
may or may not make sense like it is on tech.

I've seen companies spend millions on mainframe computers used for
transferring text files around, which a handful of pc-sized servers could
probably do just as well.

The "easy" money in the technology sector is something that should be
seriously investigated IMHO. I think everyone who works with technology has
seen their share of suspicious deals. The question to ask is often: who is
providing the easy money, money which can be "wasted" as long as it produces a
profit?

Facebook ran on investor money up until a short while ago(a short while in
major corporation age, what, 2 or 3 years?).

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple bought Instagram. But Facebook is not even
established as a blue chip, it's not a money printing machine, and it just
pulls U$ 1 billion out of its pocket and buys a photoshop thingy???

I find this deal hard to understand. I think U$ 1 billion has just been
efficiently moved from place A to place B and that's as much sense as I can
make of it.

~~~
tensor
It's even worse than that. The $1 billion is largely in stocks from what I
understand and parts of it are vested. This means that the stocks don't
actually move from one place to another slowly over time. Further, this is not
actually money. It's based on what people think the value of Facebook's stock
is. That value can go up or it can go down.

Personally, I think the current state of valuing user data so highly is
insanity. I suspect that this purchase will later be used as a prime example
of another bubble, but this time a marketing bubble rather than a tech bubble.

------
hristov
What this analysis fails to point out is that the NYT company has about 2.3
Billion dollars of liabilities. Instagram is presumably debt free. Thus if you
look purely at the market value of the business, instagram is still worth less
than one third of the NYT.

People complaining about the troubles of newspapers tend to forget how in the
nineties, when newspapers were doing very well, they all got greedy and loaded
themselves with large amounts of debt in order to go on monopoly seeking
acquisition sprees.

------
mcbaby
The New York Times, according to a quick Wikipedia search, has a (print)
circulation of <2,000,000. They also have several hundred thousand users
subscribing online (this number is to be taken with a grain of salt, it's my
own estimate after perusing Google). The NYT has been around since 1851.
Instagram was founded two years ago, and already has 27 million users--and its
Android version is not even a month old. I know owning a company is different
than investing in one, but if we stripped away their names and cultural
stigmas, I think most people would innvest in--and own--Instagram over the
NYT.

~~~
ArtB
I think the point is that it is sad that yet another social media app is worth
more monetarily than The New York Times which is one of the finest new sources
in existence.

~~~
mcbaby
But "worth" is such a subjective word. Instagram is only worth 1bn to
Facebook, whereas the NYT's value is derived from its market cap. And being
"one of the finest news sources in existence" (which I don't believe) does not
necessarily denote monetary value. With that said, I'd assert that Instagram's
value does not truly reflect its market value—it's only the value that
Facebook saw in it. The NYT's value does reflect its true market value, as
it's a publicly traded company. Again, I'd still invest in Instagram over the
New York Times any day of the week.

------
patrickgzill
The NYT may well be worth less than its current market cap, given that it has
a very high overhead in terms of its operating costs, has to manage a lot of
people, and is losing money - see their own reporting at
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/business/media/quarterly-p...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/business/media/quarterly-
profit-falls-12-2-at-times-co.html)

The NYT is _shrinking_ , Instagram is _growing_ \- that too, matters.

------
EREFUNDO
From what I've heard they are paying mostly in stock, and a lot of people
think Facebook itself is overvalued. So paying $1B with overvalued stock to
buy an overvalued company seems to make sense.....

------
jashkenas
As someone who works for the Times, it's nice to see the general sentiment of
value from folks in this thread.

There are a bunch of folks saying that comparing acquisition price to market
cap is apples vs. oranges, which may be true ... but how about market cap to
market cap? By that yardstick, Yelp.com is worth 1.5 times The New York Times.

<http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:YELP>

------
m__
You couldn't by the NYT as a whole for its market cap. Companies are almost
always bought at a premium, as the sellers receive some of the value that is
generated by the transaction itself (actually, there is some evidence that the
sellers receive _all_ the value generated by the transaction).

------
basseq
I think, all things being equal, I'd rather own the NYT than Instagram. Which
isn't to say that Facebook didn't make the right decision (i.e., to forego
buying the NYT), but that value is relative.

~~~
samtp
Would you rather own one of the most established news institutions in the
modern world or a 2 year old photo sharing startup? How is this even a
question?!

~~~
vidar
Ask Zuckerberg, he seems to have made up his mind.

~~~
wiredd
He should buy the New York Times too, and make their articles free to logged
in Facebook users. That would bring me back to Facebook more than instagram
will (nothing against instagram - it's a great app).

~~~
basseq
Ha, that was my thought experiment, too. Doesn't seem to be a fit with the
current demographic of Facebook, but Facebook is trending towards a "social
media conglomerate" to the point where it would almost make sense. Interesting
play. (Though back to the point at hand, I doubt you could _buy_ the NYT for
$1B, value or not.)

------
niccolop
I fail to see why the title uses speech marks, Instagram is worth $1bn. It
happens to be more than the NYT because that's the price the market has
determined for the companies.

An interesting analogy can be found here with Google's acquisition of YT in
2006: [http://blogs.ft.com/tech-blog/2012/04/with-its-instagram-
pur...](http://blogs.ft.com/tech-blog/2012/04/with-its-instagram-purchase-
facebook-treads-a-familiar-path/)

------
tybris
At this point, Instagram's primary value is in its brand. I never used it, but
heard about it so many times that I was under the impression it had been
around for years. It might have 30 million uploaders, but hundreds of millions
of people are aware of it. For an 18-month brand that is perhaps the most
meteoric rise in history. If you consider WPP's brand value estimates (Apple
$153 billion, Google $112 billion, Facebook $19 billion), the number might not
be so weird.

~~~
glimcat
The value of brand awareness is also inversely proportionate to how much brand
awareness you already have. When you're Facebook, more brand awareness may not
be the primary motivator.

------
voidfiles
I think it's also safe to say that Facebook, and Instagram are worth more
because they're more personal. In terms of the greater good, The New York
Times probably serves a greater purpose, and it also costs more to run. In
terms of the individual, Facebook is worth more to them. It seems like these
social products deliver more value to individuals, and so going forward are
going to be worth more then newspapers.

------
Atropos
I always find it very hard to grasp the value of software companies
intuitively. If Facebook is worth $100b right now, it is already bigger than
Amazon or Siemens! Of course a huge part of the value is an x% chance bet on
future growth / future ability to monetize and doesn't reflect the current
status you can see - rationally I can believe the valuation is defensible but
emotionally I always think "No way!"

~~~
GFischer
Well, compare

<http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html>

with

<http://www.siemens.com/annual/11/_pdf/siemens_ar2011_cfs.pdf>

and you'll see that Siemens had an EBITDA of eur 9,242 million, while Google
had an EBITDA of 2.79 billion

Facebook has a projected EBITDA of 2 billion or so, based on 250 million in
4th quarter earnings.

So, if you applied traditional valuation methods, Siemens should be worth more
than Google or Facebook. However, Siemens is more stable, while both Facebook
and Google haven't tapped into more potential sources of income, and that's
what investors are recognizing by valuing it that way.

------
mikeryan
In some ways I wonder if Facebook is viewing these acquisitions more as money
spent in a defensive "moat" a la Google.

~~~
maxprogram
I think that's exactly what they're doing -- except in this case I think
Instagram was more of a direct threat to Facebook's core business than, say,
YouTube was to Google's.

Google was like a big castle with a moat protecting it. YouTube was just a
moat -- no economic castle yet. Google bought them to add to their moat and
further protect the castle.

No way Instagram is worth $1bb as a standalone, going-concern -- but as a
defensive play for FB it might be.

All back to Clayton Christensen: modular systems disrupt integrated systems.
Microsoft, Intel disrupt Apple, IBM. Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest disrupt
Facebook.

------
fierarul
Might be a coincidence, but I think the title is suggested by this HN post:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3820850>

>the NY Times is valued at 900 million. >just sayin'

I was a bit surprised reading that post and even more a few hours later when I
read the title.

------
dhimes
The NYT lasted longer. Building a business that survives through generations
is not to me sneered at. Yes, in these times of unthinkable market reach a new
biz may get a speculative valuation (although some think it may be defensive),
the NYT brand is/was classic.

Frankly, it's humbling to think about.

------
dunk010
Here's the thing: it's not real money. It was a part cash and part shares
deal, and the facebook valuation is fantasy till they float. So what they were
really arguing here is a) how much cash they could get out now and b) how much
instagram is worth as a proportion of facebook.

------
guan
“It’s hard to find a mathematics in which Instagram worth $1 billion in cash,
but in pre-IPO stock, Facebook could stomach the hit.”

This statement might make sense if Facebook were cash strapped, but in fact
Facebook has plenty of cash. By paying in pre-IPO stock that is likely to be
worth a lot more in a few months, Facebook is probably getting a bad deal
compared to Instagram investors.

It’s true that some people think Facebook is overvalued, but there are also
analysts who believe Facebook is fairly valued
([http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2012/02/ipo-of-decade-
my...](http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2012/02/ipo-of-decade-my-valuation-
of-facebook.html)), and few are arguing it’s as overvalued as, say, Groupon
was at IPO.

------
zallarak
This is a ridiculously misleading post, cannot believe its on the front page.
The NYT is worth approximately $1.5B. It's market cap is $928MM, its debt is
$773MM and cash is $175MM. Enterprise value = Debt + Equity - Cash, so that
puts it around $1.5B.

~~~
turar
Market cap is a commonly used method to measure the company's worth, as
determined by the market. If everyone agreed that NYT was in fact worth 1.5B,
its market cap would have been 1.5B.

Also, there are many companies that have negative EV based on that formula,
yet are still functioning businesses.

~~~
damoncali
That is totally incorrect. Market cap is the value of the _equity_ , not the
business.

~~~
turar
Totally incorrect? The value of the equity is simply "assets minus
liabilities", a.k.a book value, which can be completely different from the
market cap in dollar terms. And thanks for the downvote.

~~~
damoncali
Yes - totally incorrect. You are mixing up multiple concepts here. Book value
is just that - what the accountants come up with for the books. The value of
debt is how much the debt is worth. The value of the equity is how much the
equity is worth (that is, the market cap). None of those are equivalent to the
value of the company.

Suppose I pay $60k in cash and take out a $240k mortgage to buy a house. The
$60k is equity (market cap), and the $240k is debt. The value of the home is
$300k. It works the same way with companies.

~~~
turar
So you paid $300K for the house, effectively establishing the last trade
value, i.e. the market cap, a.k.a. what "market is willing to pay for the
property", at $300K. Not $60K.

~~~
damoncali
You're still tripping up. Forget about houses. Say I buy 100% of the stock in
a business for $60k. The business then borrows $240k. When profit comes in,
some of it goes to the bank who owns the debt (giving the debt value), and
some of it goes to me - the owner of the equity (giving the equity value). So
both debt and equity are valuable - they are claims on the business's cash
flows.

Now suppose someone wants to buy the business. I still have $60k worth of
equity (100%). Do you think they can buy the entire business (claims on ALL of
it's cash flow) for $60k? Of course not. They'd have to pay off the debt AND
buy the equity. That number is $300k - the enterprise value.

Market cap is defined as the value of the outstanding equity (share price x
number of shares). Period. The value of the company can be, and often is, much
greater because most companies choose debt as part of their capital structure.

Startup tech companies like Instagram rarely do that. Nobody lends us money,
so we're stuck with equity. So for Instagram, Market Cap (if there is such a
beast for private companies) IS the enterprise value. For the NY Times, market
cap is but a percentage of the enterprise value. So it turns out the headline
of this article is actually quite incorrect. The NY Times, in any way you can
measure, is clearly worth more than $1B.

~~~
turar
Look, I totally get the debt part of the valuation, and what enterprise value
is. I also completely understand that enterprise value is an important measure
of valuation. All I'm saying is that using market cap to indicate the value of
the company is not that misleading either. Enterprise value is just one way to
value a business, there are others. It's not precise science.

So in your latest example, and also throughout the thread, you're confusing
(or using interchangeably) the concrete sale price and a fuzzy intrinsic
value. Why would the buyer of your business pay $300K upfront? All other
things being equal, the sale price of the business would still be $60k, and
they can be paying off debt for the next 15 years for all I know. The
conventional media-reported value of the business would still be $60K, and it
won't be very misleading.

In addition, not all debt is created equal. A company like Google can probably
easily get, say 1B of super cheap debt on favorable terms, while something
like Barnes & Noble would barely get the same 1B at much higher interest rates
and repayment schedules. It's still 1B in enterprise value, but it's clearly
not the same debt.

You also mentioned cash flows. So to continue with your example, if your
business is actually losing money hand over fist, and has negative cash flow
on top of $240K of debt, what do you think its value would be? Would it be
equal to your simple enterprise value formula? What if the same business is
growing at 100% per quarter with super high operating margins? Enterprise
value can be just as misleading.

~~~
damoncali
To make Times worth about a billion dollars (it's market cap), you need to
believe that that $700M+ of debt is _totally worthless_ to the debt holders.
That isn't some fuzzy detail. It's a fundamental concept that the author of
this article ignores (or doesn't understand).

~~~
turar
Not totally worthless, but most likely not worth the full $700M. They have
$2.2B in Plant/Property/Equipment on their balance sheet. Then they have
$500M+ of goodwill and intangibles. And only $500M of equity, which is
constantly declining quarter after quarter. One stupid move, and the equity is
easily wiped out, leaving debtholders with goodwill and a bunch of newspaper
printing equipment.

------
fleitz
The revenue potential of the NYT is well known and has been steadily
declining, the potential for the Instagram is largely unknown but it is known
that the internet space is rapidly expanding.

Instagram like the NYT is a business and as such is usually bought or sold
with regard to it's potential to generate income, rather than it's social
impact.

The liabilities for Instagram are 12 people's salary and a few servers, the
liabilities involved in the NYT are simply astounding, reporters salaries,
print shop salaries, marketing salaries, buildings, etc.

Instagram has people _pay_ for the privilege of giving them content where as
the NYT must pay others for their content, that difference alone is very
important.

------
yuxt
Few years ago a 2 years old startup with no revenue was acquired for almost
twice what New York Times is today. Now this startup helps to bring more than
$1 billion in earnings. The name of the startup is Youtube.

~~~
vaksel
Youtube is a whole different kind of animal though.

~~~
ramblerman
I agree with you, but the criticism and general opinion was very similar.
People didn't get it, and google was 'being silly'

------
wave
Facebook know exactly how much Instagram is worth. They don't even have to ask
the data from Instagram. They can just look at their own Facebook data to see
how many of their users use the service. Also, every photo you see on the web
has a Facebook Like button. They have all the data they need to make the
decision.

Looking at their data, Facebook feared that not acquiring Instagram is a risk
to their business, so they rather lose $1 Billion than giving advantage to
other social networking sites such as Google+. Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is
determined to stay on top.

------
niels_olson
The NYT needs to admit their mistake and heed Steve Jobs's advice from the
grave: lower the subscription price. $5-10 a month? We'd all pay. $40 a month:
are they crazy?!

------
Jabbles
Is there a 1% chance that the enormous rate of growth of Instagram would have
continued for a few more years to produce a social network the size (and
profitability) of Facebook?

If so, that's a justification for Instagram being worth roughly 1% of
Facebook.

------
og1
I guess it is also worth slightly less than 800 AOL patents. I think it is
just how much someone will pay for it vs "worth". How can you really arrive at
an estimate that NY Times ~ Instagram ~ 800 Patents anyway?

------
EricDeb
Like all celebrities, Facebook is a bit insecure and likely overly paranoid
about losing its choke hold on social/sharing.

Obviously this was only a factor, but probably is the factor that pushed
Instagram's value over the top.

------
stuckk
Instagram was worth $500 million right before the purchase. it got doubled to
1bil If nyt was gonna get bought it would get multiplied by 2 so around
$1.9billion.

Yeah. It makes no sense. It's like comparing apples to oranges.

------
Shenglong
In reality, the NYT would probably sell for much more, based on goodwill.

------
gyardley
Acquisition price reflects the value to the acquirer; market cap reflects the
value to the shareholders. Neither reflects value to society - something
completely unrelated.

------
kwamenum86
Putting the word "worth" in quotes kind of makes this article "worth" nothing,
doesn't it?

------
jaredmck
The NYT has a ton of costs built into the company, and therefore into the
market cap.

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jakeonthemove
News Corp acquired MySpace for $580 million - we all know what happened
later...

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tazzy531
Should be: the future value of Instagram is greater than future value of nyt.

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rayiner
I wouldn't invest in an old-media newspaper company in 2012...

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ReadyNSet
NY Times is/was NOT threatening facebook's reason d'ittre

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evincarofautumn
_Raison d’être_. I don’t know how threatening Instagram truly was to Facebook.
Sure, they’re both social networks, but serving very different purposes.
Instagram will remain running and separate from Facebook. The move is probably
just the good sense to get in on a growing company that they can integrate
with their platform—doubling, of course, as a defensive manoeuvre.

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danbmil99
The quotes can come off once FB goes public.

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victorbstan
In money maybe. But in information value?

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SandersAK
apples, meet oranges!

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benihana
I didn't realize the New York Times was the yardstick that we use to measure
the worth of tech startups.

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ryangilbert
It's not. It's just crazy to think that a web app with $0 revenue that's been
around for ~2 years can be worth a newspaper that's been around for over 150
years and has won more Pulitzer Prizes than any other news group.

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bdunbar
"Longevity and subjective awards are no substitute for a good valuation in
your portfolio."

Han Solo, capitalist.

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shootthemoon
I think that it is easy to confuse worth in terms of cultural value,
historical value, and monetary value. Is Instagram worth more monetarily? Yes,
in the realm of advertising, Instagrams user base is right smack in the center
of the target demographic sought by many advertisers; the 12-30 crowds.

Historically and culturally speaking, I believe that the NYT offers far
greater value. But, who wants to spend $1B on historical value?

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paulhauggis
This purchase reminds me of the broadcast.com purchase by Yahoo.

