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Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More Than $100B

332 points by champagnepapi 8y ago

bongonewhere 8y ago
but why?
- yathern 8y ago
  Because people use it? There's 1 billion monthly active accounts. And can be advertised to.
  - txcwpalpha 8y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised to see Instagram go the way of Twitter once more attention starts being called to the number of bots on IG. One of the big "value propositions" for IG is the advertising potential through influencers, but go to any influencer profile and you'll see that a significant portion of their followers are just paid bots. The "1 billion active accounts" number smells fishy to me. I have a few friends that participate in the "influencer scene" (as influencers themselves and as marketing reps at companies who purchase posts from influencers) and it's basically an open secret at this point that aside from a select few celebs, any given influencer has an entire army of bots behind them to promote their posts. Getting on the top of the discover queue is basically just down to who has the bigger bot network.
    - mkirklions 8y ago
      I totally agree. I saw a hot girl with 1M followers. So I decided to check out her website. Website looked like a bland woocommerce store, no soul, just the girl selling pictures of her and underwear. I went to alexa's Site Info and saw her website was ranked top 5 million or something poor. However, her rank in india was top 100k. The girl was not Indian, she had botted/paid so much that her fake traffic was visiting her website more than her real traffic. I guess I'm thinking I should start botting? I already make an instagram 'like' bot on friday in 60 minutes.
    - Infinitesimus 8y ago
      It's going to become an ecosystem of bots following bots :) http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180402-the-fascinating-world-of-instagrams-virtual-celebrities http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180402-the-fascinating-wo...
    - seanalltogether 8y ago
      If it's an open secret then the advertisers will adjust for it. Radio and tv stations have been working with fuzzy audience numbers for years and advertisers go along with it.
      - txcwpalpha 8y ago
        I'm pretty sure most advertisers already do adjust for it, because they know how big of a problem it is. But that's not what I meant to focus on. What I'm trying to say is that, like Twitter, IG will probably start to lose a lot of public respect and valuation if they keep boasting "we have 1 billion active users!" once the general public starts to get wind of the fact that the 1 billion number is bullshit.
  - petepete 8y ago
    Is every user really worth $100 though? How many adverts would I need to click or watch to make up that number?
    - aylmao 8y ago
      I mean, over the course of how much time? Also consider the worth of a company is not only based on revenue but assets and growth trajectory.
    - IkmoIkmo 8y ago
      Doesn't work like that. Return rates on assets average about 6% or so. i.e., if you invest $100, you expect a $6 annual income. In other words, a $100b investment would expect a $6b annual income. Take average PE ratios for example, about 15 (so 6.6% earnings as a percentage of market cap). That would require about $6 per user per year in profit. Facebook is at $6 average revenue per user (ARPU) right now, but >$25 for US users for example, and growing. Instagrams revenues are currently around $7b with a fraction of that profit, and at current growth rates, the valuation isn't crazy. If the average user spends 1 hour per day, that's 365 hours per year at $5 or about 1 penny per hour of use. It's not hard to squeeze in a penny worth of profit from ads per hour of use. This would get you at $6b net income. Given that's in the cards for the future, the valuation isn't crazy. The only flaw investors can make is that growth either isn't sustainable (I think it is for quite some time), or that Instagram users will eventually move on to other things (e.g. Myspace) such that the years of profit will be shortlived (more likely). Nobody invests $100 to gain $5 per year for a short period, that's based on perpetual income expectations which would require Instagram to stay around for quite a long time.
      - NipunSingh 8y ago
        Nice back-of-the-envelope analysis. But just wanted to let you know, the ARPU numbers are per quarter, not per year! For Q1’2018, from the official earnings report, has worldwide ARPU at $5.53 for that quarter. In US, for Q1, it was $23.59 ARPU.
      - petepete 8y ago
        Thank you for the detailed answer, much appreciated.
- hknd 8y ago
  It has a loooot of users, and it's growing faster than any other social network. FB growth is staggering, but instagram is exploding. Instagram's innovation strategy is working out nicely > new features are launched, and are loved by it's users. On top of that they are now also focusing on SMBs (mostly in NBUs) with Whatsapp Business. (That branch could add >100M users)
  - mrtree 8y ago
    But how does that turn inti profit?
  - whitepoplar 8y ago
    It's exploding because apart from being a really good product, they made the UX super, super simple. With just enough little nuggets of complexity to make it feel whole.
    - whitepoplar 8y ago
      On another note, what do you call this phenomenon, when something is super simple, but you can just tell how much work went into it? iA Writer, Instagram, Dropbox, iPhone, a great chair...they feel expensive, regardless of price.
      - tgragnato 8y ago
        Minimalism / “less is more” ?
  - rconti 8y ago
    I can't think of any new 'features' since stories, though. And wasn't that ripped off from someone else?
    - Spooks 8y ago
      I think they just added a TV type thing
- seattle_spring 8y ago
  "I could build Instagram in a weekend!"
  - codemac 8y ago
    "Who needs dropbox when you have rsync!"
  - Rjevski 8y ago
    Honestly though, building its functionality in a weekend is perfectly doable, the hard part is the ad tracking/stalking infrastructure that goes in the background.
    - seattle_spring 8y ago
      Literally the attitude I was referring to. No, you unquestionably could not build Instagram in a weekend, ads or not.
- lquist 8y ago
  $10bn in revenue and growing at a healthy clip
mpg33 8y ago
Hell of an acquisition by Zuckerberg
- hknd 8y ago
  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.
  - 27182818284 8y ago
    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.
  - mkirklions 8y ago
    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.
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      Facebook owns Instagram, so they haven't really lost you, have they?
      - mkirklions 8y ago
        That was my point with that sentence. They still have me.
    - 2trill2spill 8y ago
      > 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/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FB/
deleted 8y ago
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TheRealPomax 8y ago
Too bad that "worth" doesn't come from anything. Oh no wait. User data. I can't wait for that to become an illegal trade.
- freehunter 8y ago
  You do realize that Instagram has ads that companies pay money for right? That's where they make their money, when companies purchase ads on Instagram.
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
    I think TheRealPomex' point was that the companies pay money for those ads because facebook has the user data to ensure the ads are appropriately targeted.
    - mkirklions 8y ago
      I have never found facebook ads 'worth it'. Even with professional marketers, total joke and waste of money. People do not click on ads, and those that 'do', might be fake facebook bots or actually facebook messing with numbers. My new 'ad' is that I make content that people will search for on google. Then they can check out the rest of my website.
      - Rjevski 8y ago
        As much as I’d love to agree with you there are a lot of idiots out there that click on ads because they legitimately believe it’s a good product/service (hint: if they have to pay someone to shove their product in your face, it’s not a good one), or can’t tell the ads from real content (I guess that’s why “chumboxes” like Outbrain/Taboola are still a thing). I had first-hand evidence of this when my friend fell for some weight loss scam ad of Facebook. We ended up charging it back, and despite all that she’s still not convinced and will happily participate in loyalty schemes, give out personal information to anyone that asks (she literally gets one spam email every few minutes in her Yahoo mailbox) and prefers buying from unknown/shady/scammy sites like Groupon rather than more reputable outlets.
ggregoire 8y ago
I have some adult friends spending 1 or 2 hours a day on Instagram. I can’t even imagine how much time millenials spend on it.
- yathern 8y ago
  I wouldn't make the assumption that millenials spend significantly more than that on the app. It's certainly possible, I guess. But as I commute to work and back (hour by bus or train) - it's often 35+ aged people who have their eyes glued to instagram/facebook the entire length of the trip. EDIT: Data shows that you're probably right, and millenials spend more [time]( https://www.statista.com/statistics/267138/social-media-usage-per-day-global-social-video-users-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/267138/social-media-usag...). A lot around 3 hours even.
  - ggregoire 8y ago
    The other day in a plane, all the people next to me and in front of me were on FB/Insta before the flight. After landing, everybody turned off the flight mode and got back on FB/Insta!? The flight was 1-hour long.
    - lawlessone 8y ago
      I would criticise.. but i probably spend as much time arguing on twitter with complete strangers.
      - toasterlovin 8y ago
        But if you do it right, arguing with strangers on the internet helps you think better.
- nashashmi 8y ago
  umm. millenials are adults too now. O/T, but the millennials are born between 1980 to 1990/1992. The generation after are post-millenials, for lack of a better word.
icantdrive55 8y ago
And it probally is, and there's no accounting for taste. The morons are in control, and the Internet sold out to the biggest paycheck. As usual! (Maybe for the better? I spent too much time on this medium. Time to venture out and talk to the strangers? And yes--the best of my Internet was around 2007.).
vthallam 8y ago
No wonder. Anecdotal of course, but I see my friends spending more time on instagram and people on the train or bus browsing instagram. I don't remember seeing FB on someone's mobile in the last 6 months. It will only grow bigger and at some point when it becomes too big, you see less friends posts and more advts and people move on to something else. But for next 2 years, Instagram's going to be Yuuuge.(Huge)
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  They are at that too big stage already. Even started abusing network effect monopoly and breaking UX to direct more attention towards ads.
- mliker 8y ago
  I constantly see people at airports on FB
- dtft 8y ago
  If you travel to other countries (for me, Thailand most recently) you'll see almost everyone on Facebook. Most small companies over there don't even have a website, just a FB page.
  - pier25 8y ago
    Yes, same thing in Mexico. Many companies only have a FB page.
- mayankkaizen 8y ago
  At least in India and for me, it is exactly opposite. I never saw Instagram open on anybody's mobile. It is always facebook and whatsapp. Sometimes Twitter but never Instagram.
- antpls 8y ago
  The amount of advertisement is already big. Constant interruption with sponsored stories, sponsored pictures, even "influencer" or anyone else who has more than 100k followers start using their images to advertise a product or a place.
creaghpatr 8y ago
Wonder if they will ever spin it off as a public company? Seems like Facebook is on the way out and shareholders are going to want to double down on the future.
- matte_black 8y ago
  What’s the point of that? Facebook as a company can have multiple products that aren’t Facebook. Buy FB.
bizbizhn 8y ago
Indeed it does. Most people doesn't even browse the web anymore. World news, social updates, gossip... Everything in one app.
woranl 8y ago
The acquisition of Instagram was more about keeping Facebook as a company to stay relevant. Well played.
dmvinson 8y ago
I wonder about Instagram's success if they had decided to reject the Facebook acquisition. While there's no way to know who got the better end of the deal, it would be better for the tech ecosystem to have more large players and their success feels inevitable in hindsight.
- nemild 8y ago
  At the time, all the pundits thought it ($1 BN) was insane. They'd compare revenue and time since founding to acquisition price, and used it to dismiss the Silicon Valley bubble.
- Rjevski 8y ago
  I guess they could’ve made more effort to cater to professional photographers (and steal marketshare from Flickr and 500px and similar) and offered paid plans.
- gfo 8y ago
  I feel like Facebook would have found an alternative to squash the competition, but also, in this case I agree that they were already bound to be successful given the ease of use. I found the story of Instagram interesting, if you're curious. Link to the "How I Built This" podcast episode on Instagram: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-public-radio/how-i-built-this/e/46455236 https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-public-radio/how-i...
- code_duck 8y ago
  Facebook probably would have copied them somehow, though I don't know if it would have been successful. FB's duplicate of Snapchat has been a huge success and is a major part of IG today. I don't know if FB would have been able to successfully replace Snapchat without using the Instagram app as a springboard.
  - dmvinson 8y ago
    Instagram Stories seem like a logical extension of Instagram itself. Adding a pure photosharing section to Facebook or something like that in order to copy Instagram seems much more redundant and difficult. To be fair though, the minds of Facebook have much more incentive to find a good way to do so than I do
admn2 8y ago
I've long had a theory (maybe it's not that revolutionary) that part of Instagram's success is it allowed people a free pass to be vain and show off-y. On Facebook, it was a bit stigmatized to post a picture of an expensive purchase, amazing house interior, fancy vacation, or workout picture of your physique. However, it's the entire point of Instagram. Couple that in with all the brands and other accounts of inspiration for whatever you're into and you have a lot of reasons to open the app constantly. Edit: Also worth pointing out that you could argue Facebook's infrastructure was hugely important to their growth. Instagram was literally almost anonymous profiles. However, once FB got everyone to connect their FB accounts (which they may have been able to do with only a phone number as I did notice this became a requirement), they gave advertisers and brands a lot off resources and tools (and reasons) to devote money and energy to the platform.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  For me, it's loading up Instagram and seeing just a bunch of interesting photos. Minimal memes, no link shares, and it's rare a comments thread that devolves into insanity.
  - beauzero 8y ago
    ...for me...comments are rare. It is a welcome thing.
  - admn2 8y ago
    Yeah, which is another reason they got rid of the chronological timeline. People were opening the app so often and frequently, they had to ensure fresh content. This way they can track which photos you've seen, and make sure to float to the top ones you missed. Edit: All the points below are true too, of course. I do find myself subconsciously opening instagram a scary amount, so seems one reason to switch it up would be to always have fresh content. I do agree that once you get to where you last left off, you're likely to exit the app.
    - dmitriid 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
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gojomo 8y ago
Fun to review how many HN commenters pooh-poohed the acquisition and price back in 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840
- throwaway427 8y ago
  I don't really care for hilighting peoples past skepticism but this guy literally asked for it: --- [...] This is not going to be one of the best tech acquisitions of the next decade. YouTube helped to propel Google into content. It also helped to commoditise web video in a massive way: reminiscent of the way which Google commoditised search (YouTube is probably just short of being a byword for online video at this point). Instagram is a photo service in a sea of other photo services. Photography has been around on the web in meaningful ways for a long time. Flickr lost out to Facebook in the community stakes, and Instagram is doing great in whatever-the-fuck market it's in (the share-to-my-twitter-followers market?), but this is not Google acquiring YouTube. Bookmark this comment. See you in 2022. --- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3818055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3818055
  - chemochemo 8y ago
    To be fair, it isn't 2022 yet.
    - skinnymuch 8y ago
      Instagram is supposed to be at around 1.75B users and triple or quadruple their current revenue by then. Of course anything can happen, but chances are the user growth and revenue growth are going to happen. At least Instagram is only potentially worth $100B right now with only $500M a month in revenue.
  - themagician 8y ago
    He's not completely wrong though. Instagram was a photo service when it started. The focus was on photography. Interesting pictures of things happening in the moment. It was about taking the best picture you could in the moment and being forced to post it. I'm not even sure I'd call Instagram as a photo service anymore. The original core functionality (using it as a digital polaroid and applying a filter) doesn't even seem to be something people use at all anymore. I'm not even sure the majority of the posts are even photos—what between the random images with text above them, screenshots, and the videos. Instagram was a photo service in a sea of other photo services. Now it's a generic social network where you just post whatever.
csomar 8y ago
I remember the outrage when Zuckerberg bought Insta for $1bn. The Internet was filled with bubble-theorist. Say what you want about Zuckerberg but the guy was well ahead of his time and could see how things would evolve and what tick with people brains.
- ionised 8y ago
  It's a shame he couldn't put that vision to a better use than advertising.
  - onetimemanytime 8y ago
    Advertising is a very legitimate way of making money, lots of it. Now tracking people all over the web and other shady things, are a different story.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >Advertising is a very legitimate way of making money Yes, just not a way to make something that improves our lives. Or even if you manage to make something that improves our lives, advertising is an incentive to pervert it and hold it back (e.g. you create a social network so people from all over the world can meet, then ads make you cripple it, force feed BS to them, milk them with spam, exploit their private data, and so on...)
      - J5892 8y ago
        How would you monetize it without ads? Instagram would have died an early death if you had to pay for it, and hiding certain features behind a pay wall would alienate 90% of the users.
        coldtea 8y ago
        >Instagram would have died an early death if you had to pay for it That would be a bonus. >hiding certain features behind a pay wall would alienate 90% of the users Only before they have conditioned differently from an industry that has been legally allowed to trade private information for ad money.
dao- 8y ago
Social pressure to be on instagram seems to be growing. For years I could get by with facebook, and my phone number / whatsapp for close enough friends. I'm now on instagram after a bunch of people I met independently in Berlin, Amsterdam and San Francisco in the last few weeks expected me to have an account there. I told the youtube UX person who I met in SF that I noticed this trend and don't fully understand it, and her response was that instagram is just how you write messages these days, as if this was totally obvious and not a side feature of instagram.
- drb91 8y ago
  > instagram is just how you write messages these days, as if this was totally obvious and not a side feature of instagram. At times, I just give up on my ability to participate in society because of shit like this.
  - Aco- 8y ago
    same
  - gaurgo 8y ago
    If you have a message to get across, that's where the eyeballs are
    - drb91 8y ago
      What if I just want to hang out with my friends? It’s easiest when everyone actually uses the same thing—people literally complain if I text them. The result is I lose touch with people because it’s exhausting keeping track of all the places my friends are.
beauzero 8y ago
I enjoy IG because I have narrower friends and family there. ...and Orvis. Love flyfishing and honestly I couldn't consume the content there or see amazing fishing or be "up" on their stuff by watching tv or browsing. It's condensed. I tried following some skiing stuff but just get spammed by people trying to hawk stupid ski sayings on tshirts. Mostly recycled junk. I now almost have more followers by people hawking ski t-shirts than friends. It's just stupid.
- NegativeK 8y ago
  I get a t-shirt spam account following me roughly every day or two, except for climbing crap. Report them for spam. Instagram nukes a lot of them, and either way you end up blocking them.
- gadders 8y ago
  There must be a bot or something that people use where if they choose to follow you it will then like EXACTLY two posts at random. Yeah, good luck with that. I'm still not following back.
Invictus0 8y ago
At the time of the acquisition, people criticized the cost per user of the acquisition. $1B for 40M users was a cost of $25 per user. That analysis failed to take into account Instagram's growth, and the cost per user today is roughly $1.
tardo99 8y ago
The thing I wonder is whether some of this value is coming at the expense of people reading books. My guess is there's a significant overlap in the demographics. Which is too bad, because I view books as a positive for society while Instagram really seems to be a big net negative.
shubhamjain 8y ago
Facebook (the company) is in for the long haul and this is a perfect example of it. It's insane how Zuckerberg has managed to establish the company so well in a segment (social media) that is so susceptible to fads. Facebook.com's usage could very well plateau, but the company has Instagram, WhatsApp, and some bets that are yet to play out (Oculus VR). Zuckerberg isn't lucky here, he just has incredible insight about what matters in the social media business and what he has to do get there.
mtgx 8y ago
Now more than ever is the time to force Facebook to spin-off Instagram. Wouldn't the world be a much better place if Facebook had to compete with Instagram? (And Snapchat, and Twitter, and WhatsApp...)
Bantros 8y ago
scoffs
IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
A useless product valued at $100B? Sigh.
mxfh 8y ago
There was a hot take yesterday, that Instagram is slowly morphing into the WeChat of the west. And no other app is even close. https://twitter.com/dhof/status/1010902202691538944 https://twitter.com/dhof/status/1010902202691538944
unclebucknasty 8y ago
Let's take it to zero. Who's with me?
hahahaha23 8y ago
contents on instagram are toxic.
kotrunga 8y ago
Does this mean 1 active monthly user equals $100 in your companies value? :D
cozzyd 8y ago
I recently started using Instagram (at first, to boost the number of followers for someone's organization's account). But it's actually kind of fun, every once in a while I see something interesting and instagram is a place I can post that without really bothering other people (since that's the point!)
gigatexal 8y ago
The founders sold to FB for 3 billion. Makes you wonder what WhatsApp is worth to Facebook. If 3B then is worth 100B now to FB is WhatsApp worth 633B now? ((100/3) * 19)
- wepple 8y ago
  I know that’s just back of the envelope math, but I’d suspect monetizing whatsapp has been far trickier (do they make money at all?) so it wouldn’t be multiplied at anything like Insta. The e2e crypto must really kill opportunities to sell data or push ads. Edit: spelling
jackiem 8y ago
Interesting!
overcast 8y ago
Not surprising, considering Instagram is the #1 marketing tool for brands and businesses right now.
ddtaylor 8y ago
I think I'm officially old now since I truly don't "get" Instagram or care to.
- delecti 8y ago
  Instagram is one of the simplest social networks. It's twitter with a focus on picture posts. It's blogging but every post is centered around a picture. It's one thing to not want one yourself, but to be willfully ignorant about something so simple and publicly visible seems like an odd thing to feel the need to advertise.
  - nmeofthestate 8y ago
    Bizarrely I find that Twitter is better for posting pictures (they're not so low resolution and compressed, and the UI is less hostile to viewing them).
    - delecti 8y ago
      I disagree, but only because reply tweets are the same "class" of content as the initial image tweet itself. It makes it less a comment on the image and more a post directed towards the image's poster. I also think Twitter's UI is still somewhat hostile to viewing them because of how thumbnails aren't just shrunk but also trimmed. I can see where you're coming from though.
vowelless 8y ago
I am quite privacy conscious. I have deleted my FB account. On principle, I dislike targeted ads, user tracking, etc. BUT, I hate to admit this, the ads I get in Instagram are the most relevant I have ever gotten. I actually look forward to them, to discover new products. They are perfectly tailored to me. Dammit.
- flamtap 8y ago
  I was targeted by an ad for those Gravity Blankets (as I'm sure many others were). I bought one as a gift for my SO. The whole time I was looking at the Gravity Blanket website, I was thinking to myself "dammit, they got me." What I was even more impressed by is that after I bought one, I never saw another Gravity Blanket ad again.
  - pc86 8y ago
    I've never thought about that last bit until now. Do you think the ad targeting is being updated with actual purchasers on such a regular basis, or is that baked into whatever tracking cookie(s) were used, e.g. the FB pixel?
    - dillondoyle 8y ago
      Both. I would bet they are excluding conversions AND using conversion data to refine/lookalike new targets
    - mateo411 8y ago
      Yes, they measure the conversion rate of the ad campaign. If you bought the Gravity Blanket, then you were part of the cohort that converted.
  - hawaiianbrah 8y ago
    How do you like it? I’m really curious about them!
    - flamtap 8y ago
BadassFractal 8y ago
I've regained a lot of mental peace once I quit Instagram. When you have hundreds of friends and follow other random people on the platform, you get the impression that every single person is always on a beach in Bali, eating at Michelin star restaurants, riding lambos and partying with attractive successful people in the most exclusive venues out there. All the while you're a corporate drone sitting in a cubicle all day, or you're stuck in traffic, or are dealing with a shitty boss, or you're trying to figure out how to pay rent. In reality, those people don't have that lifestyle. They're simply marketers and FOMO generators, but our brains aren't super good at seeing past that. It's analogous to how regular people don't realize just how much Photoshop and photographic skill goes into making someone look as good as they do in magazines and on their IG feed. We look at them and immediately conclude that we're some kind of a sub-human degenerate species compared to them, whereas in reality it's all bullshit. It feels SO much better to swim in one's lane, not looking around to see how everybody else is doing, especially when it's not real. I'm not a religious person, but there's something really powerful in the admonition not to not covet your neighbor's spouse, house, animals (car?) etc. Except it's much worse with IG, where you're exposed daily to hundreds if not thousands of "neighbors" who are all showing off their pretend-success. The genius of IG is that it makes people willingly subscribe to hours of marketing every day.
debt 8y ago
$100BB strikes me as true on the face of it, but there's something in my gut that tells me that is much too large a valuation. Is a television network worth $100BB? That's what Instagram/Youtube/Netflix etc. are becoming a network of original shows. Of course, Instagram/Facebook are still early so they still look like Youtube in their early days, but they'll all converge to the same point of just outright creating their own original content.
financialsub 8y ago
That's funny. I don't pay for it so I suppose I estimated it to be worthless. Make me pay for it to get a more accurate estimate. Thanks!
deleted 8y ago
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sharkweek 8y ago
I'm a 30something curmudgeon, but I have become addicted to their "explore" page or whatever it is. Their algorithms have masterfully created an infinite scroll of addictive content that generally applies to my tastes. I caught myself a few months ago scrolling through that page for almost 30 minutes before realizing what I had been doing. I now have to be very intentional about not going down that constantly-refreshing feature for more than a few minutes. Anytime I ask my wife what she's doing on her phone, it's almost always Instagram. No more Snapchat, no more Pinterest, and no more "official" Facebook.
- cbolton 8y ago
  Could you further explain a bit the appeal? I have never used Instagram and I imagine it as scrolling through dozens of pictures of cool stuff people do... Is that it? Do you have "feeds" with pictures that correspond to a specific interest of yours? (Is Instagram actually the best place to find interesting pictures on a range of topics?) Do you post a lot yourself or is it virtually all "consumption"? Would you say the identity of the posters plays a significant role (friends, celebrities... ?) or is it really more about the content? Sorry for the barrage of questions, feel free to ignore any or all of them!
  - soared 8y ago
    Not op, but: > Do you have "feeds" with pictures that correspond to a specific interest of yours? (Is Instagram actually the best place to find interesting pictures on a range of topics?) Yes, the explore page has tabs for topics. > Do you post a lot yourself or is it virtually all "consumption"? Both. Consumption of all my different interests from small and major content producers. Then I post my photos to my ~150 friends. > Would you say the identity of the posters plays a significant role (friends, celebrities... ?) or is it really more about the content? Content for me, but I do seek out some specific accounts because I know what to expect.
- antpls 8y ago
  I'm between 25 and 30 and I find myself in the same situation. I suspect the addiction comes from a cognitive or psychological trait related to sorting and filtering things together. If they show you 5 pictures you don't like much, with 1 picture you like, you want to make that picture "win" against the others. The only tool you are given are : likes, comments and report as spam.
myf01d 8y ago
What a time to be alive. Many tech companies now that don't offer any actual product or service and don't even make money are valued multiple times more than the biggest car manufacturers.
- simplecomplex 8y ago
  Instagram makes money. Companies pay them to purchase ads. Isn’t that obvious ? “In 2018, [Instagram]'s estimated net mobile advertising revenues are projected to reach 6.84 billion U.S. dollars, up from 1.86 billion U.S. dollars in 2016.“ https://www.statista.com/statistics/448157/instagram-worldwide-mobile-internet-advertising-revenue/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/448157/instagram-worldwi...
uhhhhhhh 8y ago
I guess I'm one of the outliers. The worst part of FB to me is the vain pictures and constant "look at me attitude", which is pretty much 90% of the instagram content I've seen. The comments are about on par with FB comments on the "look at me" picture posts as well, so little to no improvement or added value there. I don't have an instagram account and have 0 interest in getting one or ever posting anything to it.
nmeofthestate 8y ago
I simply do not understand the attraction of Instagram. My brother posts photos on it, and the quality of the pictures is rubbish. They're small, with compression artifacts. The app itself doesn't even let you pinch to zoom without snapping back when you let go (fair enough given how low resolution the pictures are). Obviously I'm looking at this wrong - it's clearly not an app for posting photos, because it sucks at that.
- deltateam 8y ago
  the frustration is the attraction its like why cosmopolitan gives bad and ridiculous relationship advice but yes, you are looking at it wrong Instagram gets away from all scrutiny by looking like a toy. Like when you are hacking someone's wifi with a Nintendo 3DS while they are wondering the appeal of this cute device for children. Instagram is likely the most technologically sophisticated social network out there and has been for a while. The UI merely escaped feature creep for most of the decade.
- alextheghost 8y ago
  Clearly you missed the whole point of the app, which is not about posting pictures with perfect quality.
  - txcwpalpha 8y ago
    To expand, the fact that the pictures are imperfect quality pretty much is the whole point. The inability to really zoom in, all of the filters that adjust the hue/sharpness, etc are all things that help you hide away imperfections in your photo and draw attention to the broader gist of "look at what I'm eating/where I'm traveling/what I'm doing/how pretty I am!" The point of Instagram isn't to be able to see the wrinkles in that model's face. The point of Instagram is that you can't see the wrinkles in that model's face.
    - breischl 8y ago
      Ah, that explains why they won't allow you to post photos from their website. I do some serious-amateur and (when I'm lucky) semi-pro quality photography using a "real camera". I was going to post some of them on Instagram, but discovered that I can't do it except maybe via the phone app. But there's no way I'm shuttling photos from my desktop to my phone so that I can upload them to Instagram.
docker_up 8y ago
Instagram is a perfect business case on how to integrate an acquisition and make it better than it could have been on its own. It should be studied in business schools as to how to not fuck up an acquisition. So many companies buy things that die, and I thought this would happen to Instagram but it has only become more popular, it's quite an impressive feat.
ChuckMcM 8y ago
FWIW this is the HN response when Facebook acquired Instagram: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840 Fun to see how well Amanda Peyton's comment held up.
emodendroket 8y ago
For reference this is about one-third of the value of Bank of America, the largest bank in the country. I wonder.
- rs86 8y ago
  100b is insane. That should price a basically risk free security giving 1b profits/yr
tempodox 8y ago
If someone were to buy Instagram for $100B, how long would it take them to make their money back and then turn a profit on top of that?
- TheBeardKing 8y ago
  The money is invested, not gone. Any growth is profit once you sell the company.
merinowool 8y ago
I tried to use Instagram couple of times and I just don't seem to get it. What am I suppose to do there?
diminish 8y ago
To be contrarian - Facebook is transferring its own user base to Instagram at a quarterly rate which is convenient to shadow Snapchat. The people I see there aren't much different than the ones on FB every month. FB is notifying me that, every single friend on FB is now on Instagram. My likes on Instagram aren't shown to my followers - (I hope ) and that's the main difference which affects my behavior. Likes on instagram are cheap, like a casual double tap. On FB or LinkedIn they're expensive.
- xkjkls 8y ago
  It really depends on where you live. Instagram and Facebook are still achieving substantial unabated growth in developing countries. In the US, usage for FB's main app has pulled back a little, though remains pretty high. The major difference in developed countries is that the new post-millenial generation aren't seeing the same usage patterns.
- natrik 8y ago
  Your recent likes are shown to your followers on Instagram.
- nacs 8y ago
  > My likes on Instagram aren't shown to my followers Your likes actually are shared with your followers. It's somewhat useful for discovering new accounts but I wish it could be toggled off.
- antpls 8y ago
  With video chat, Instagram is also competiting with WhatsApp. Instagram could soon host the whole WhatsApp user base too.
chrshawkes 8y ago
Facebook acquiring Instagram (good move) Google acquiring YouTube (good move) Microsoft acquiring Github (good move) Yahoo acquiring Tumblr for over a billion (bad move) Did anybody really think that was a good idea? I personally didn't. Not now, not ever.
- gaius 8y ago
  Sun acquisition of MySQL for a billion was pretty bad too
samfisher83 8y ago
Zuck bought Instagram for 1Bil. That is like the yahoo guys investing in Baba.
yryr55 8y ago
I value it at $10 million in year 2020.
rs86 8y ago
Gotta be careful with estimates, a random analyst says it's worth 100b and a research firm says it's going to reach so many users in a few years, but zero attention is paid to what assumptions underlie those estimates; publicly available investment research information is useless

332 points by champagnepapi 8y ago

bongonewhere 8y ago

but why?

yathern 8y ago
Because people use it? There's 1 billion monthly active accounts. And can be advertised to.
- txcwpalpha 8y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised to see Instagram go the way of Twitter once more attention starts being called to the number of bots on IG. One of the big "value propositions" for IG is the advertising potential through influencers, but go to any influencer profile and you'll see that a significant portion of their followers are just paid bots. The "1 billion active accounts" number smells fishy to me. I have a few friends that participate in the "influencer scene" (as influencers themselves and as marketing reps at companies who purchase posts from influencers) and it's basically an open secret at this point that aside from a select few celebs, any given influencer has an entire army of bots behind them to promote their posts. Getting on the top of the discover queue is basically just down to who has the bigger bot network.
  - mkirklions 8y ago
    I totally agree. I saw a hot girl with 1M followers. So I decided to check out her website. Website looked like a bland woocommerce store, no soul, just the girl selling pictures of her and underwear. I went to alexa's Site Info and saw her website was ranked top 5 million or something poor. However, her rank in india was top 100k. The girl was not Indian, she had botted/paid so much that her fake traffic was visiting her website more than her real traffic. I guess I'm thinking I should start botting? I already make an instagram 'like' bot on friday in 60 minutes.
  - Infinitesimus 8y ago
    It's going to become an ecosystem of bots following bots :) http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180402-the-fascinating-world-of-instagrams-virtual-celebrities http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180402-the-fascinating-wo...
  - seanalltogether 8y ago
    If it's an open secret then the advertisers will adjust for it. Radio and tv stations have been working with fuzzy audience numbers for years and advertisers go along with it.
    - txcwpalpha 8y ago
      I'm pretty sure most advertisers already do adjust for it, because they know how big of a problem it is. But that's not what I meant to focus on. What I'm trying to say is that, like Twitter, IG will probably start to lose a lot of public respect and valuation if they keep boasting "we have 1 billion active users!" once the general public starts to get wind of the fact that the 1 billion number is bullshit.
- petepete 8y ago
  Is every user really worth $100 though? How many adverts would I need to click or watch to make up that number?
  - aylmao 8y ago
    I mean, over the course of how much time? Also consider the worth of a company is not only based on revenue but assets and growth trajectory.
  - IkmoIkmo 8y ago
    Doesn't work like that. Return rates on assets average about 6% or so. i.e., if you invest $100, you expect a $6 annual income. In other words, a $100b investment would expect a $6b annual income. Take average PE ratios for example, about 15 (so 6.6% earnings as a percentage of market cap). That would require about $6 per user per year in profit. Facebook is at $6 average revenue per user (ARPU) right now, but >$25 for US users for example, and growing. Instagrams revenues are currently around $7b with a fraction of that profit, and at current growth rates, the valuation isn't crazy. If the average user spends 1 hour per day, that's 365 hours per year at $5 or about 1 penny per hour of use. It's not hard to squeeze in a penny worth of profit from ads per hour of use. This would get you at $6b net income. Given that's in the cards for the future, the valuation isn't crazy. The only flaw investors can make is that growth either isn't sustainable (I think it is for quite some time), or that Instagram users will eventually move on to other things (e.g. Myspace) such that the years of profit will be shortlived (more likely). Nobody invests $100 to gain $5 per year for a short period, that's based on perpetual income expectations which would require Instagram to stay around for quite a long time.
    - NipunSingh 8y ago
      Nice back-of-the-envelope analysis. But just wanted to let you know, the ARPU numbers are per quarter, not per year! For Q1’2018, from the official earnings report, has worldwide ARPU at $5.53 for that quarter. In US, for Q1, it was $23.59 ARPU.
    - petepete 8y ago
      Thank you for the detailed answer, much appreciated.
hknd 8y ago
It has a loooot of users, and it's growing faster than any other social network. FB growth is staggering, but instagram is exploding. Instagram's innovation strategy is working out nicely > new features are launched, and are loved by it's users. On top of that they are now also focusing on SMBs (mostly in NBUs) with Whatsapp Business. (That branch could add >100M users)
- mrtree 8y ago
  But how does that turn inti profit?
- whitepoplar 8y ago
  It's exploding because apart from being a really good product, they made the UX super, super simple. With just enough little nuggets of complexity to make it feel whole.
  - whitepoplar 8y ago
    On another note, what do you call this phenomenon, when something is super simple, but you can just tell how much work went into it? iA Writer, Instagram, Dropbox, iPhone, a great chair...they feel expensive, regardless of price.
    - tgragnato 8y ago
      Minimalism / “less is more” ?
- rconti 8y ago
  I can't think of any new 'features' since stories, though. And wasn't that ripped off from someone else?
  - Spooks 8y ago
    I think they just added a TV type thing
seattle_spring 8y ago
"I could build Instagram in a weekend!"
- codemac 8y ago
  "Who needs dropbox when you have rsync!"
- Rjevski 8y ago
  Honestly though, building its functionality in a weekend is perfectly doable, the hard part is the ad tracking/stalking infrastructure that goes in the background.
  - seattle_spring 8y ago
    Literally the attitude I was referring to. No, you unquestionably could not build Instagram in a weekend, ads or not.
lquist 8y ago
$10bn in revenue and growing at a healthy clip

mpg33 8y ago

Hell of an acquisition by Zuckerberg

hknd 8y ago
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.
- 27182818284 8y ago
  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.
- mkirklions 8y ago
  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.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Facebook owns Instagram, so they haven't really lost you, have they?
    - mkirklions 8y ago
      That was my point with that sentence. They still have me.
  - 2trill2spill 8y ago
    > 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/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FB/

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

TheRealPomax 8y ago

Too bad that "worth" doesn't come from anything. Oh no wait. User data. I can't wait for that to become an illegal trade.

freehunter 8y ago
You do realize that Instagram has ads that companies pay money for right? That's where they make their money, when companies purchase ads on Instagram.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  I think TheRealPomex' point was that the companies pay money for those ads because facebook has the user data to ensure the ads are appropriately targeted.
  - mkirklions 8y ago
    I have never found facebook ads 'worth it'. Even with professional marketers, total joke and waste of money. People do not click on ads, and those that 'do', might be fake facebook bots or actually facebook messing with numbers. My new 'ad' is that I make content that people will search for on google. Then they can check out the rest of my website.
    - Rjevski 8y ago
      As much as I’d love to agree with you there are a lot of idiots out there that click on ads because they legitimately believe it’s a good product/service (hint: if they have to pay someone to shove their product in your face, it’s not a good one), or can’t tell the ads from real content (I guess that’s why “chumboxes” like Outbrain/Taboola are still a thing). I had first-hand evidence of this when my friend fell for some weight loss scam ad of Facebook. We ended up charging it back, and despite all that she’s still not convinced and will happily participate in loyalty schemes, give out personal information to anyone that asks (she literally gets one spam email every few minutes in her Yahoo mailbox) and prefers buying from unknown/shady/scammy sites like Groupon rather than more reputable outlets.

ggregoire 8y ago

I have some adult friends spending 1 or 2 hours a day on Instagram. I can’t even imagine how much time millenials spend on it.

yathern 8y ago
I wouldn't make the assumption that millenials spend significantly more than that on the app. It's certainly possible, I guess. But as I commute to work and back (hour by bus or train) - it's often 35+ aged people who have their eyes glued to instagram/facebook the entire length of the trip. EDIT: Data shows that you're probably right, and millenials spend more [time]( https://www.statista.com/statistics/267138/social-media-usage-per-day-global-social-video-users-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/267138/social-media-usag...). A lot around 3 hours even.
- ggregoire 8y ago
  The other day in a plane, all the people next to me and in front of me were on FB/Insta before the flight. After landing, everybody turned off the flight mode and got back on FB/Insta!? The flight was 1-hour long.
  - lawlessone 8y ago
    I would criticise.. but i probably spend as much time arguing on twitter with complete strangers.
    - toasterlovin 8y ago
      But if you do it right, arguing with strangers on the internet helps you think better.
nashashmi 8y ago
umm. millenials are adults too now. O/T, but the millennials are born between 1980 to 1990/1992. The generation after are post-millenials, for lack of a better word.

icantdrive55 8y ago

And it probally is, and there's no accounting for taste. The morons are in control, and the Internet sold out to the biggest paycheck. As usual! (Maybe for the better? I spent too much time on this medium. Time to venture out and talk to the strangers? And yes--the best of my Internet was around 2007.).

vthallam 8y ago

No wonder. Anecdotal of course, but I see my friends spending more time on instagram and people on the train or bus browsing instagram. I don't remember seeing FB on someone's mobile in the last 6 months. It will only grow bigger and at some point when it becomes too big, you see less friends posts and more advts and people move on to something else. But for next 2 years, Instagram's going to be Yuuuge.(Huge)

zzzcpan 8y ago
They are at that too big stage already. Even started abusing network effect monopoly and breaking UX to direct more attention towards ads.
mliker 8y ago
I constantly see people at airports on FB
dtft 8y ago
If you travel to other countries (for me, Thailand most recently) you'll see almost everyone on Facebook. Most small companies over there don't even have a website, just a FB page.
- pier25 8y ago
  Yes, same thing in Mexico. Many companies only have a FB page.
mayankkaizen 8y ago
At least in India and for me, it is exactly opposite. I never saw Instagram open on anybody's mobile. It is always facebook and whatsapp. Sometimes Twitter but never Instagram.
antpls 8y ago
The amount of advertisement is already big. Constant interruption with sponsored stories, sponsored pictures, even "influencer" or anyone else who has more than 100k followers start using their images to advertise a product or a place.

creaghpatr 8y ago

Wonder if they will ever spin it off as a public company? Seems like Facebook is on the way out and shareholders are going to want to double down on the future.

matte_black 8y ago
What’s the point of that? Facebook as a company can have multiple products that aren’t Facebook. Buy FB.

bizbizhn 8y ago

Indeed it does. Most people doesn't even browse the web anymore. World news, social updates, gossip... Everything in one app.

woranl 8y ago

The acquisition of Instagram was more about keeping Facebook as a company to stay relevant. Well played.

dmvinson 8y ago

I wonder about Instagram's success if they had decided to reject the Facebook acquisition. While there's no way to know who got the better end of the deal, it would be better for the tech ecosystem to have more large players and their success feels inevitable in hindsight.

nemild 8y ago
At the time, all the pundits thought it ($1 BN) was insane. They'd compare revenue and time since founding to acquisition price, and used it to dismiss the Silicon Valley bubble.
Rjevski 8y ago
I guess they could’ve made more effort to cater to professional photographers (and steal marketshare from Flickr and 500px and similar) and offered paid plans.
gfo 8y ago
I feel like Facebook would have found an alternative to squash the competition, but also, in this case I agree that they were already bound to be successful given the ease of use. I found the story of Instagram interesting, if you're curious. Link to the "How I Built This" podcast episode on Instagram: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-public-radio/how-i-built-this/e/46455236 https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-public-radio/how-i...
code_duck 8y ago
Facebook probably would have copied them somehow, though I don't know if it would have been successful. FB's duplicate of Snapchat has been a huge success and is a major part of IG today. I don't know if FB would have been able to successfully replace Snapchat without using the Instagram app as a springboard.
- dmvinson 8y ago
  Instagram Stories seem like a logical extension of Instagram itself. Adding a pure photosharing section to Facebook or something like that in order to copy Instagram seems much more redundant and difficult. To be fair though, the minds of Facebook have much more incentive to find a good way to do so than I do

admn2 8y ago

I've long had a theory (maybe it's not that revolutionary) that part of Instagram's success is it allowed people a free pass to be vain and show off-y. On Facebook, it was a bit stigmatized to post a picture of an expensive purchase, amazing house interior, fancy vacation, or workout picture of your physique. However, it's the entire point of Instagram. Couple that in with all the brands and other accounts of inspiration for whatever you're into and you have a lot of reasons to open the app constantly. Edit: Also worth pointing out that you could argue Facebook's infrastructure was hugely important to their growth. Instagram was literally almost anonymous profiles. However, once FB got everyone to connect their FB accounts (which they may have been able to do with only a phone number as I did notice this became a requirement), they gave advertisers and brands a lot off resources and tools (and reasons) to devote money and energy to the platform.

ceejayoz 8y ago
For me, it's loading up Instagram and seeing just a bunch of interesting photos. Minimal memes, no link shares, and it's rare a comments thread that devolves into insanity.
- beauzero 8y ago
  ...for me...comments are rare. It is a welcome thing.
- admn2 8y ago
  Yeah, which is another reason they got rid of the chronological timeline. People were opening the app so often and frequently, they had to ensure fresh content. This way they can track which photos you've seen, and make sure to float to the top ones you missed. Edit: All the points below are true too, of course. I do find myself subconsciously opening instagram a scary amount, so seems one reason to switch it up would be to always have fresh content. I do agree that once you get to where you last left off, you're likely to exit the app.
  - dmitriid 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

gojomo 8y ago

Fun to review how many HN commenters pooh-poohed the acquisition and price back in 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840

throwaway427 8y ago
I don't really care for hilighting peoples past skepticism but this guy literally asked for it: --- [...] This is not going to be one of the best tech acquisitions of the next decade. YouTube helped to propel Google into content. It also helped to commoditise web video in a massive way: reminiscent of the way which Google commoditised search (YouTube is probably just short of being a byword for online video at this point). Instagram is a photo service in a sea of other photo services. Photography has been around on the web in meaningful ways for a long time. Flickr lost out to Facebook in the community stakes, and Instagram is doing great in whatever-the-fuck market it's in (the share-to-my-twitter-followers market?), but this is not Google acquiring YouTube. Bookmark this comment. See you in 2022. --- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3818055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3818055
- chemochemo 8y ago
  To be fair, it isn't 2022 yet.
  - skinnymuch 8y ago
    Instagram is supposed to be at around 1.75B users and triple or quadruple their current revenue by then. Of course anything can happen, but chances are the user growth and revenue growth are going to happen. At least Instagram is only potentially worth $100B right now with only $500M a month in revenue.
- themagician 8y ago
  He's not completely wrong though. Instagram was a photo service when it started. The focus was on photography. Interesting pictures of things happening in the moment. It was about taking the best picture you could in the moment and being forced to post it. I'm not even sure I'd call Instagram as a photo service anymore. The original core functionality (using it as a digital polaroid and applying a filter) doesn't even seem to be something people use at all anymore. I'm not even sure the majority of the posts are even photos—what between the random images with text above them, screenshots, and the videos. Instagram was a photo service in a sea of other photo services. Now it's a generic social network where you just post whatever.

csomar 8y ago

I remember the outrage when Zuckerberg bought Insta for $1bn. The Internet was filled with bubble-theorist. Say what you want about Zuckerberg but the guy was well ahead of his time and could see how things would evolve and what tick with people brains.

ionised 8y ago
It's a shame he couldn't put that vision to a better use than advertising.
- onetimemanytime 8y ago
  Advertising is a very legitimate way of making money, lots of it. Now tracking people all over the web and other shady things, are a different story.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >Advertising is a very legitimate way of making money Yes, just not a way to make something that improves our lives. Or even if you manage to make something that improves our lives, advertising is an incentive to pervert it and hold it back (e.g. you create a social network so people from all over the world can meet, then ads make you cripple it, force feed BS to them, milk them with spam, exploit their private data, and so on...)
    - J5892 8y ago
      How would you monetize it without ads? Instagram would have died an early death if you had to pay for it, and hiding certain features behind a pay wall would alienate 90% of the users.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        >Instagram would have died an early death if you had to pay for it That would be a bonus. >hiding certain features behind a pay wall would alienate 90% of the users Only before they have conditioned differently from an industry that has been legally allowed to trade private information for ad money.

dao- 8y ago

Social pressure to be on instagram seems to be growing. For years I could get by with facebook, and my phone number / whatsapp for close enough friends. I'm now on instagram after a bunch of people I met independently in Berlin, Amsterdam and San Francisco in the last few weeks expected me to have an account there. I told the youtube UX person who I met in SF that I noticed this trend and don't fully understand it, and her response was that instagram is just how you write messages these days, as if this was totally obvious and not a side feature of instagram.

drb91 8y ago
> instagram is just how you write messages these days, as if this was totally obvious and not a side feature of instagram. At times, I just give up on my ability to participate in society because of shit like this.
- Aco- 8y ago
  same
- gaurgo 8y ago
  If you have a message to get across, that's where the eyeballs are
  - drb91 8y ago
    What if I just want to hang out with my friends? It’s easiest when everyone actually uses the same thing—people literally complain if I text them. The result is I lose touch with people because it’s exhausting keeping track of all the places my friends are.

beauzero 8y ago

I enjoy IG because I have narrower friends and family there. ...and Orvis. Love flyfishing and honestly I couldn't consume the content there or see amazing fishing or be "up" on their stuff by watching tv or browsing. It's condensed. I tried following some skiing stuff but just get spammed by people trying to hawk stupid ski sayings on tshirts. Mostly recycled junk. I now almost have more followers by people hawking ski t-shirts than friends. It's just stupid.

NegativeK 8y ago
I get a t-shirt spam account following me roughly every day or two, except for climbing crap. Report them for spam. Instagram nukes a lot of them, and either way you end up blocking them.
gadders 8y ago
There must be a bot or something that people use where if they choose to follow you it will then like EXACTLY two posts at random. Yeah, good luck with that. I'm still not following back.

Invictus0 8y ago

At the time of the acquisition, people criticized the cost per user of the acquisition. $1B for 40M users was a cost of $25 per user. That analysis failed to take into account Instagram's growth, and the cost per user today is roughly $1.

tardo99 8y ago

The thing I wonder is whether some of this value is coming at the expense of people reading books. My guess is there's a significant overlap in the demographics. Which is too bad, because I view books as a positive for society while Instagram really seems to be a big net negative.

shubhamjain 8y ago

Facebook (the company) is in for the long haul and this is a perfect example of it. It's insane how Zuckerberg has managed to establish the company so well in a segment (social media) that is so susceptible to fads. Facebook.com's usage could very well plateau, but the company has Instagram, WhatsApp, and some bets that are yet to play out (Oculus VR). Zuckerberg isn't lucky here, he just has incredible insight about what matters in the social media business and what he has to do get there.

mtgx 8y ago

Now more than ever is the time to force Facebook to spin-off Instagram. Wouldn't the world be a much better place if Facebook had to compete with Instagram? (And Snapchat, and Twitter, and WhatsApp...)

Bantros 8y ago

scoffs

IOT_Apprentice 8y ago

A useless product valued at $100B? Sigh.

mxfh 8y ago

There was a hot take yesterday, that Instagram is slowly morphing into the WeChat of the west. And no other app is even close. https://twitter.com/dhof/status/1010902202691538944 https://twitter.com/dhof/status/1010902202691538944

unclebucknasty 8y ago

Let's take it to zero. Who's with me?

hahahaha23 8y ago

contents on instagram are toxic.

kotrunga 8y ago

Does this mean 1 active monthly user equals $100 in your companies value? :D

cozzyd 8y ago

I recently started using Instagram (at first, to boost the number of followers for someone's organization's account). But it's actually kind of fun, every once in a while I see something interesting and instagram is a place I can post that without really bothering other people (since that's the point!)

gigatexal 8y ago

The founders sold to FB for 3 billion. Makes you wonder what WhatsApp is worth to Facebook. If 3B then is worth 100B now to FB is WhatsApp worth 633B now? ((100/3) * 19)

wepple 8y ago
I know that’s just back of the envelope math, but I’d suspect monetizing whatsapp has been far trickier (do they make money at all?) so it wouldn’t be multiplied at anything like Insta. The e2e crypto must really kill opportunities to sell data or push ads. Edit: spelling

jackiem 8y ago

Interesting!

overcast 8y ago

Not surprising, considering Instagram is the #1 marketing tool for brands and businesses right now.

ddtaylor 8y ago

I think I'm officially old now since I truly don't "get" Instagram or care to.

delecti 8y ago
Instagram is one of the simplest social networks. It's twitter with a focus on picture posts. It's blogging but every post is centered around a picture. It's one thing to not want one yourself, but to be willfully ignorant about something so simple and publicly visible seems like an odd thing to feel the need to advertise.
- nmeofthestate 8y ago
  Bizarrely I find that Twitter is better for posting pictures (they're not so low resolution and compressed, and the UI is less hostile to viewing them).
  - delecti 8y ago
    I disagree, but only because reply tweets are the same "class" of content as the initial image tweet itself. It makes it less a comment on the image and more a post directed towards the image's poster. I also think Twitter's UI is still somewhat hostile to viewing them because of how thumbnails aren't just shrunk but also trimmed. I can see where you're coming from though.

vowelless 8y ago

I am quite privacy conscious. I have deleted my FB account. On principle, I dislike targeted ads, user tracking, etc. BUT, I hate to admit this, the ads I get in Instagram are the most relevant I have ever gotten. I actually look forward to them, to discover new products. They are perfectly tailored to me. Dammit.

flamtap 8y ago
I was targeted by an ad for those Gravity Blankets (as I'm sure many others were). I bought one as a gift for my SO. The whole time I was looking at the Gravity Blanket website, I was thinking to myself "dammit, they got me." What I was even more impressed by is that after I bought one, I never saw another Gravity Blanket ad again.
- pc86 8y ago
  I've never thought about that last bit until now. Do you think the ad targeting is being updated with actual purchasers on such a regular basis, or is that baked into whatever tracking cookie(s) were used, e.g. the FB pixel?
  - dillondoyle 8y ago
    Both. I would bet they are excluding conversions AND using conversion data to refine/lookalike new targets
  - mateo411 8y ago
    Yes, they measure the conversion rate of the ad campaign. If you bought the Gravity Blanket, then you were part of the cohort that converted.
- hawaiianbrah 8y ago
  How do you like it? I’m really curious about them!
  - flamtap 8y ago

BadassFractal 8y ago

I've regained a lot of mental peace once I quit Instagram. When you have hundreds of friends and follow other random people on the platform, you get the impression that every single person is always on a beach in Bali, eating at Michelin star restaurants, riding lambos and partying with attractive successful people in the most exclusive venues out there. All the while you're a corporate drone sitting in a cubicle all day, or you're stuck in traffic, or are dealing with a shitty boss, or you're trying to figure out how to pay rent. In reality, those people don't have that lifestyle. They're simply marketers and FOMO generators, but our brains aren't super good at seeing past that. It's analogous to how regular people don't realize just how much Photoshop and photographic skill goes into making someone look as good as they do in magazines and on their IG feed. We look at them and immediately conclude that we're some kind of a sub-human degenerate species compared to them, whereas in reality it's all bullshit. It feels SO much better to swim in one's lane, not looking around to see how everybody else is doing, especially when it's not real. I'm not a religious person, but there's something really powerful in the admonition not to not covet your neighbor's spouse, house, animals (car?) etc. Except it's much worse with IG, where you're exposed daily to hundreds if not thousands of "neighbors" who are all showing off their pretend-success. The genius of IG is that it makes people willingly subscribe to hours of marketing every day.

debt 8y ago

$100BB strikes me as true on the face of it, but there's something in my gut that tells me that is much too large a valuation. Is a television network worth $100BB? That's what Instagram/Youtube/Netflix etc. are becoming a network of original shows. Of course, Instagram/Facebook are still early so they still look like Youtube in their early days, but they'll all converge to the same point of just outright creating their own original content.

financialsub 8y ago

That's funny. I don't pay for it so I suppose I estimated it to be worthless. Make me pay for it to get a more accurate estimate. Thanks!

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

sharkweek 8y ago

I'm a 30something curmudgeon, but I have become addicted to their "explore" page or whatever it is. Their algorithms have masterfully created an infinite scroll of addictive content that generally applies to my tastes. I caught myself a few months ago scrolling through that page for almost 30 minutes before realizing what I had been doing. I now have to be very intentional about not going down that constantly-refreshing feature for more than a few minutes. Anytime I ask my wife what she's doing on her phone, it's almost always Instagram. No more Snapchat, no more Pinterest, and no more "official" Facebook.

cbolton 8y ago
Could you further explain a bit the appeal? I have never used Instagram and I imagine it as scrolling through dozens of pictures of cool stuff people do... Is that it? Do you have "feeds" with pictures that correspond to a specific interest of yours? (Is Instagram actually the best place to find interesting pictures on a range of topics?) Do you post a lot yourself or is it virtually all "consumption"? Would you say the identity of the posters plays a significant role (friends, celebrities... ?) or is it really more about the content? Sorry for the barrage of questions, feel free to ignore any or all of them!
- soared 8y ago
  Not op, but: > Do you have "feeds" with pictures that correspond to a specific interest of yours? (Is Instagram actually the best place to find interesting pictures on a range of topics?) Yes, the explore page has tabs for topics. > Do you post a lot yourself or is it virtually all "consumption"? Both. Consumption of all my different interests from small and major content producers. Then I post my photos to my ~150 friends. > Would you say the identity of the posters plays a significant role (friends, celebrities... ?) or is it really more about the content? Content for me, but I do seek out some specific accounts because I know what to expect.
antpls 8y ago
I'm between 25 and 30 and I find myself in the same situation. I suspect the addiction comes from a cognitive or psychological trait related to sorting and filtering things together. If they show you 5 pictures you don't like much, with 1 picture you like, you want to make that picture "win" against the others. The only tool you are given are : likes, comments and report as spam.

myf01d 8y ago

What a time to be alive. Many tech companies now that don't offer any actual product or service and don't even make money are valued multiple times more than the biggest car manufacturers.

simplecomplex 8y ago
Instagram makes money. Companies pay them to purchase ads. Isn’t that obvious ? “In 2018, [Instagram]'s estimated net mobile advertising revenues are projected to reach 6.84 billion U.S. dollars, up from 1.86 billion U.S. dollars in 2016.“ https://www.statista.com/statistics/448157/instagram-worldwide-mobile-internet-advertising-revenue/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/448157/instagram-worldwi...

uhhhhhhh 8y ago

I guess I'm one of the outliers. The worst part of FB to me is the vain pictures and constant "look at me attitude", which is pretty much 90% of the instagram content I've seen. The comments are about on par with FB comments on the "look at me" picture posts as well, so little to no improvement or added value there. I don't have an instagram account and have 0 interest in getting one or ever posting anything to it.

nmeofthestate 8y ago

I simply do not understand the attraction of Instagram. My brother posts photos on it, and the quality of the pictures is rubbish. They're small, with compression artifacts. The app itself doesn't even let you pinch to zoom without snapping back when you let go (fair enough given how low resolution the pictures are). Obviously I'm looking at this wrong - it's clearly not an app for posting photos, because it sucks at that.

deltateam 8y ago
the frustration is the attraction its like why cosmopolitan gives bad and ridiculous relationship advice but yes, you are looking at it wrong Instagram gets away from all scrutiny by looking like a toy. Like when you are hacking someone's wifi with a Nintendo 3DS while they are wondering the appeal of this cute device for children. Instagram is likely the most technologically sophisticated social network out there and has been for a while. The UI merely escaped feature creep for most of the decade.
alextheghost 8y ago
Clearly you missed the whole point of the app, which is not about posting pictures with perfect quality.
- txcwpalpha 8y ago
  To expand, the fact that the pictures are imperfect quality pretty much is the whole point. The inability to really zoom in, all of the filters that adjust the hue/sharpness, etc are all things that help you hide away imperfections in your photo and draw attention to the broader gist of "look at what I'm eating/where I'm traveling/what I'm doing/how pretty I am!" The point of Instagram isn't to be able to see the wrinkles in that model's face. The point of Instagram is that you can't see the wrinkles in that model's face.
  - breischl 8y ago
    Ah, that explains why they won't allow you to post photos from their website. I do some serious-amateur and (when I'm lucky) semi-pro quality photography using a "real camera". I was going to post some of them on Instagram, but discovered that I can't do it except maybe via the phone app. But there's no way I'm shuttling photos from my desktop to my phone so that I can upload them to Instagram.

docker_up 8y ago

Instagram is a perfect business case on how to integrate an acquisition and make it better than it could have been on its own. It should be studied in business schools as to how to not fuck up an acquisition. So many companies buy things that die, and I thought this would happen to Instagram but it has only become more popular, it's quite an impressive feat.

ChuckMcM 8y ago

FWIW this is the HN response when Facebook acquired Instagram: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840 Fun to see how well Amanda Peyton's comment held up.

emodendroket 8y ago

For reference this is about one-third of the value of Bank of America, the largest bank in the country. I wonder.

rs86 8y ago
100b is insane. That should price a basically risk free security giving 1b profits/yr

tempodox 8y ago

If someone were to buy Instagram for $100B, how long would it take them to make their money back and then turn a profit on top of that?

TheBeardKing 8y ago
The money is invested, not gone. Any growth is profit once you sell the company.

merinowool 8y ago

I tried to use Instagram couple of times and I just don't seem to get it. What am I suppose to do there?

diminish 8y ago

To be contrarian - Facebook is transferring its own user base to Instagram at a quarterly rate which is convenient to shadow Snapchat. The people I see there aren't much different than the ones on FB every month. FB is notifying me that, every single friend on FB is now on Instagram. My likes on Instagram aren't shown to my followers - (I hope ) and that's the main difference which affects my behavior. Likes on instagram are cheap, like a casual double tap. On FB or LinkedIn they're expensive.

xkjkls 8y ago
It really depends on where you live. Instagram and Facebook are still achieving substantial unabated growth in developing countries. In the US, usage for FB's main app has pulled back a little, though remains pretty high. The major difference in developed countries is that the new post-millenial generation aren't seeing the same usage patterns.
natrik 8y ago
Your recent likes are shown to your followers on Instagram.
nacs 8y ago
> My likes on Instagram aren't shown to my followers Your likes actually are shared with your followers. It's somewhat useful for discovering new accounts but I wish it could be toggled off.
antpls 8y ago
With video chat, Instagram is also competiting with WhatsApp. Instagram could soon host the whole WhatsApp user base too.

chrshawkes 8y ago

Facebook acquiring Instagram (good move) Google acquiring YouTube (good move) Microsoft acquiring Github (good move) Yahoo acquiring Tumblr for over a billion (bad move) Did anybody really think that was a good idea? I personally didn't. Not now, not ever.

gaius 8y ago
Sun acquisition of MySQL for a billion was pretty bad too

samfisher83 8y ago

Zuck bought Instagram for 1Bil. That is like the yahoo guys investing in Baba.

yryr55 8y ago

I value it at $10 million in year 2020.

rs86 8y ago

Gotta be careful with estimates, a random analyst says it's worth 100b and a research firm says it's going to reach so many users in a few years, but zero attention is paid to what assumptions underlie those estimates; publicly available investment research information is useless