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Comment by mpg33 | Hacker News Reader

Hell of an acquisition by Zuckerberg

Probably the best tech acquisition of all time.

It's either that or YouTube. I guess you could argue for Apple acquiring NeXT, but that's an acquisition that isn't really able to be measured in the same way.

Why not since Bloomberg is now pulling numbers out of its ass? A billion MAU with projected $10 billion annual revenue gives a 10x annual revenue valuation. Apple has long surpassed a billion iOS units sold, and annual revenue is $230 billion, give or take, so it should be worth $2.3 trillion. Not bad for an inflation adjusted acquisition worth $654 million.

There are a lot of reasons why a fast growing business like Instagram should be trading at higher multiples than Apple.

Also the value in NeXT came from Steve Jobs, not NeXT itself.

And Apple is not a "fast growing business"? Have you looked into their "Services" category? IG's REVENUE is claimed to be $10 billion. Apple's Services NET SALES was $9.19 billion. In the last QUARTER. So, yes, Apple is a "fast growing business", and is growing faster than Instagram. If Bloomberg was fair, Apple's services alone is a $400 billion company.

Taking a long-term view, IG's revenue comes from advertising i.e. it's a one-trick pony, just like Facebook. Apple is a diversified company; even though iPhone makes up >60% revenue, is anyone with an iota of financial sense going to complain that it's a bad thing?

And shame on the government for not doing any due diligence in trying to prevent this acquisition/monopoly.

When the acqusition happened instagram was not large enough.

Instagram was not that popular back in the time.

Monopoly? In 2012, Instagram had 40 million users and no revenue[1]. Hardly a monopoly.. Everybody mocked Facebook for buying up Instagram for the amount of money they were offering. Nobody (or, perhaps, very very few amount of people) at the time thought it would become a $100bn company. You really think the government should have had the foresight to block this? Wishful thinking on your part..

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2012/04/13/instagrams-user-count-now-...

>> And shame on the government for not doing any due diligence in trying to prevent this acquisition/monopoly.

> Monopoly? In 2012, Instagram had 40 million users and no revenue[1]. Hardly a monopoly.

I think you misunderstand. Facebook is the monopoly in the grandparent, not the independent Instagram.

I believe the GP's point is that the government should have blocked FB's acquisition of IG, so IG could have provided competition for FB.

I don't think I misunderstand. In 2012, there were quite a few up and coming social media apps. Twitter, Vine (2013), Tumblr, Pinterest, Snapchat (2011), and even Google+. Plenty of competition from both small and big companies. I'm not saying Facebook isn't a monopoly but given the options, you can't possibly think that at the time Instagram was going to be the "Facebook killer".

In hindsight, sure, we'd all love that. But seeing the recent FB hearings with congress, it seems they are still figuring out what the internet is.

Shame on the government for allowing an enterprise to become so successful. We should all protest for a worse economy! Fewer goods and services! Unemployment! That's what we want!

Actually, I want some of that to be true :) Some unemployment would lower house prices and make buying a new one a bit more affordable :)

I can remember how everybody was laughing about the acquisition: "Waaat? Billions for a chat app? hahaha" It's amazing how things are turning out.

I remember not thinking that it was overpriced, but amazed that it became a threat to Facebook worth that in just like 2 years. If I recall correctly, it was a team of 13 at the time of that offer.

Well, I think FB has probably lost 100B in value, and as someone who stopped using FB this year because I dont enjoy it anymore-

I moved to instagram and twitter.

Mind you, 100B for an app that is filled with bots and corporate accounts makes me think whoever did the valuation has never actually used IG.

Facebook owns Instagram, so they haven't really lost you, have they?

That was my point with that sentence. They still have me.

> Well, I think FB has probably lost 100B in value, and as someone who stopped using FB this year because I dont enjoy it anymore-I moved to instagram and twitter.

Well that's incorrect Facebook is only like $5 bucks per share off their all time high: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FB/

That was WhatsApp. Instagram has always been photos.

WhatsApp is also turning out to be a great acquisition too

If I remember correctly, they paid only a cool billion for Instagram, which means this would be a 100x return at this valuation.

I laughed too, I was thinking "Wow, $1B for a photo app that has some lame filters, take a semester of digital image processing and you could do that".

To their credit, the app was extremely simple back then, today it has managed to add complexity without being so overwhelming(although Instagram TV adds more eyesore to the screen), slowly they copied good, proven features and blended well into the Facebook ecosystem.

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