4 ms·

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 acquis

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.

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.