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Bored bureaucrats excited to work on hip cases. Instagram was a little startup getting bought by a big startup. If it wasn't for the high price tag no one would have given this deal a second thought. The press made a big deal of it so the bureaucrats will too.

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Facebook isn't a startup.

What you mean to say is that it doesn't fit your concept of a startup. There's no single definition of "startup" that's commonly accepted. In my view Facebook is at the very extreme end of the startup spectrum.

An estimated value of $100b, the ability to throw $1b into acquisitions and over 3000 employees - still a startup?

By such logic you can almost call Google a startup, or any other IT firm really. What exactly makes Facebook a startup by any definition?

The valuation of a company is irrelevant to my definition of a startup. I think Facebook is still a startup because it's still in the process of rapidly scaling and transforming itself.

When it slows down and settles into long term strategy it will cease to meet my definition. It's starting to do that now.

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