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Comment by iloveluce | Hacker News Reader

Hacker news thread when Facebook acquired Instagram https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840

Notable that the number one comment in that thread references Google/YouTube. And that it worked for being "mostly left alone." Surprising that Google has never repeated that trick, that I'm aware of. Seems they mostly acquire and let die. (Curious if they tried that with YouTube, but it had already passed a threshold?)

Google already had the failed Google Video to know that there usual approach would fail. I'd say it was natural to let YouTube run itself while providing additional help with the infrastructure and adverts. Also notice they did eventually replace the old social network with G+ which is otherwise so thoroughly dead as to be mostly forgotten.

I don't think they had acknowledged Video failed, at that point. YouTube was more of a hedge. A very good one.

Similar could be said for Facebook. Though, I think they just segmented their market better.

Bezos, I believe, is best at this. How many things has he acquired and left completely alone? It is almost baffling how good Zappos is for buying shoes, while Amazon is pretty awful.

I think Warren Buffett is better.

I never viewed him as a CEO. :( Likely my view is just off.

Though, I'm now curious how much of this Bezos learned from him. Weren't they close? It makes sense to view these acquisitions as investments, instead of takeovers.

And for everyone that has given examples of Google doing this. Apologies for not responding individually. I am glad to hear it is more that they just get a lot of press for the mistakes. I'd love to see more press dedicated to what appear as successes. I guess they have to be ballpark hits to get press?

The other impressive bit about Bezos is his knack for bargain hunting. I don't think he's paid more than a billion dollars for any of his acquisitions. Twitch, Zappos, and Kiva were all just under a billion. Wildly impressive given the advantages that each provide!

If I understand your comparison, I see what you are saying and we are not quite in disagreement. Google took their hedge after seeing the video service they created fail to gather the momentum and use YouTube had. At the time it did not even compare to Vimeo and maybe even Dailymotion. So they took a hedge as things were looking like they would not get that market segment. And outside of YouTube dying that's likely what would have happened.

Facebook saw a trend in IG they couldn't compete with without fundamentally changing their product. Where IG could have created alternate complementary products and began eating onto FB market. There really isn't room for two networks like FB anymore and the adolescents I know won't touch FB. Its all snapchat and IG. (Which offer much better incentives.)

Both were moves to absorb a niche where each company would have difficulty compering. My claim is FB's was more forward thinking and less reactionary.

Fair. I was commenting that Google seemed to think they could still beat YouTube.

That is, Facebook seems geared to live beside insta gram. Video seemed clear to either beat or die to YouTube.

So yeah, I was trying to add to your comment. Not necessarily contradict it.

Amazon doesn't leave everything alone. Zappos is one of the few Amazon acquisitions that included a culture clause. Everything else is rewritten as soon as it's on the Bezos radar.

I lost access somehow to my original account because my pseudonym was a pseudonym. Alas.

Same, after hours of Googling I believe there is no way to restore it.

Mine is still there, something went wrong in a verification process and password was reset.

Lost my original HN account for similar reasons. Alas there will be no recovery.

Android was also mostly left alone for a number of years.

> Surprising that Google has never repeated that trick

What about Waze?

Yeah, the failed Google Plus integration with / takeover of YT was so awful to users that they stopped the transition entirely.

Somehow YouTube survived!

made an account to post this b/c I don't normally post on hackernews

but does anyone else get a sense of schadenfreude when reading these comments

There are people doubting that Facebook could monetize or become a blue chip stock

There's a comment of a guy being sure that Instagram would fail and literally says "Bookmark this comment, see you in 2022" (Five years to go boys)

This is why I'm convinced that people should honestly share like 1% of what they are really thinking in comments. Yeah, there might be a 1% chance that Instagram would succeed, but do you really want to look like the idiot doubting it could ever happen, with your comment immortalized on the world wide web five years later when you're proven wrong?

In hindsight everything looks obvious. At the time the failure of MySpace was still fresh, Facebook had not monitized its service and it wasn't obvious that chat clients like WhatsApp and SnapChat would (or could) get these insane multi-billion valuations.

I think it was obvious. I remember being in college during the acquisition and thinking it was obviously a smart deal. And Instagram was pursued hotly, so many tech insiders thought it was a good deal too.

People on Hacker News are only now just coming around to Snapchat, but I thought Snapchat was obviously going to succeed 4 years ago when I was still in college - 70% of the people I knew in college were using it.

You might object to this and claim that other apps (which are not guaranteed successes now) like Yik Yak should have been similarly "obvious" to me at the time - but that's just not true. I didn't know anyone who used other social media apps (like Yik Yak, etc.) at the time as much as Snapchat (if they did, they kept it to themselves).

But when it comes to social apps, there's just something about Hacker News being particularly closed-minded. Even in the face of overwhelming usage, I still see a solid plurality of cynical HN comments about any given social app.

I don't object to the veracity of your claims but I would note that "it's what everyone around me is using" doesn't scale very well. For example, if you're from the U.S. you might not know anyone who uses WhatsApp nevertheless it has over a billion users and is the default messenger app in many countries.

That's irrelevant. It's a positive filter, not a negative one (I didn't claim the absence of everyone using it indicates lack of success).

> I thought Snapchat was obviously going to succeed 4 years ago when I was still in college - 70% of the people I knew in college were using it.

I've no idea when you were in college, but if 70% of the people around you were using it, I presume it was already successful.

Yes. You would have no idea of this reading Hacker News threads about Snapchat 4 years ago, though.

having a user base and monetizing and succeeding as a profitable business are not the same, this was not much after the 08 crunch , there could have been a repeat of 2000s bubble, VC money could have dried up, sure guessing it would work out was cool and all, it certainly wasn't the obvious outcome

it would have failed if it wasn't for this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook,_Inc._v._Power_Ventur....

Government and regulations always protect monopolies!

Your link doesn't work since the '.' fell off the end:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook,_Inc._v._Power_Ventur....

And I'd hardly call Facebook a monopoly in 2009 when that case was decided. I think Myspace still had more users at that time.

The same happened to yours. A bug in HN's truncation, I guess?

Yep, must be.. I doubled up the period in my comment and it looks like that fixed it.

> This is why I'm convinced that people should honestly share like 1% of what they are really thinking in comments. Yeah, there might be a 1% chance that Instagram would succeed, but do you really want to look like the idiot doubting it could ever happen, with your comment immortalized on the world wide web five years later when you're proven wrong?

The world has enough silent cowards. Give me an outspoken person who puts their money (/honour) where their mouth is, any day.

I'm fairly certain approximately 100% of the people in that thread who thought the IG move was a bad idea also did absolutely nothing to bet AGAINST the move they were so sure about

in the end they were just speculators speculating

My point is not that "commenting on the internet is dumb cause it might make you look like an idiot" but the fact is that probably zero of the detractors in the HN link posted had anything other than an uninformed opinion

That's a fine point, but it's not what you said. You said people should keep their opinions to themselves, for fear of "looking like an idiot". That's the worst possible reason to not speak out.

If you want people to shut up because their uninformed opinions annoy you, that's something else. Say that, and take the bad karma that comes with it.

You're much too sane for this place, get out while you still can.

You consider Facebook a blue chip stock?

I was wrong about FB's valuation way back when during their IPO. I remember thinking, no way FB is worth that. On a side note, does anyone know off-hand how Zuck was able to accomplish such remarkable retention of control as a founder of FB? So many founder's have lost control of their companies, yet Zuckerberg was able to use an arcane stock set-up to do this?

Facebook was a rocketship of organic growth, which gave Zuck tons of leverage with investors. He was also advised on retaining control by experienced guys like Sean Parker. Him moving to Silicon Valley also helped, because it has the most founder friendly investors on the planet.

Seems like most people got it. I remember being much more taken aback by the WhatsApp acquisition.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7266618

Which I think has not yet proven itself to be a savvy one monetarily (but the usage numbers remain incredible)

Can we now mock all those who prognosticated poorly in regards to Instagram's success?

I see a lot of smug in the previous thread that needs to be called out.

if the only reason you're right and they're wrong is because you enjoyed the benefit of hindsight, then i would say that's not much to brag about...

No need to mock anyone. Just take your awesome market prediction skills and make an easy billion dollars or two for yourself.

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