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Instagram might not became that big, but it definitely was on track to become somewhat big, that's why Facebook bought it, in fear of competition. Same, Youtub

Instagram might not became that big, but it definitely was on track to become somewhat big, that's why Facebook bought it, in fear of competition. Same, Youtube might go down, but the idea was out of the box now, someone else would do that. Technology (ContentID) was there as well. As a consumer, I don't mind if it'd be called differently done by different team. It might have been better or worse of course.

scarface74 4y ago
How was Instagram going to become profitable? YouTube’s issue wasn’t just being sued, the storage and bandwidth costs are huge and YouTube was losing billions. Rumors are that YouTube is still not profitable.
- kennywinker 4y ago
  Ads or a subscription service. Not that complicated. With that many eyeballs you don’t need to be a genius to make money off it.
  - Tanoc 4y ago
    Google over-leveraged advertising on Youtube however. Most Youtube viewers use an adblocker on PC, and adblock is becoming more common on Android with each passing month. All because AdSense went with a more lax policy of moderation for ads after the 2017 fallout caused by Matt Watson scared away big advertisers like Frito-Lay and Toyota. The result was all ads were either falsely advertised Android games, multi-level marketing scams, or even nakedly racist political ads in the runup to the 2018 congressional elections. Adblock rates exploded, cutting Youtube's income and causing a panic response of running even more ads and locking users into seeing them. To this day Youtube still has a lax vetting policy for advertising partners, and actively hateful, harmful, or overtly false ads stay up for weeks until enough users report them. As for subscriptions... Well, they tried that with Youtube Red. And then Youtube Premium. And then Youtube Music. Every time people turned it down, because the benefits weren't worth the cost each month considering all the features touted could be found legally for free elsewhere. And when video creators outed Red by showing they'd get a paltry amount of that revenue, despite Youtube saying the money from subscriptions would be used to pay them, even more of the viewing audience turned against it. When you're in the uniquely precarious position of hosting high cost user-generated content, it's very easy for outside forces to break you over their knee and send you into a death spiral.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    How are ad supported companies outside of Google and Facebook doing today?
- dima_vm 4y ago
  "We run ads, senator." (c) Mark
  - scarface74 4y ago
    YouTube took years and only became slightly profitable after burning through billions of Google’s money and then only by piggybacking off of Google’s existing infrastructure and ad network.
    - mrkurt 4y ago
      YouTube is a tremendous antitrust fail. The very definition of price dumping. It could have been profitable earlier, but it would have been much smaller and faced stiff competition. That isn't what Google needed from it.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        How could YouTube be profitable earlier as it’s bandwidth and storage costs grew? Is every company that is not immediately producing a profitable product “price dumping” - including every startup YC funds?
        mrkurt 4y ago
        Price dumping is a bigger deal when it's a company in a monopoly position doing it. It's not necessarily anti competitive to sell at below cost. YouTube could have been profitable by charging for their services. Like Vimeo. They could not have been profitable with ads. Google couldn't afford for YouTube to be small, they needed a near monopoly on internet video to extend their ad empire.
        jasode 4y ago
        >YouTube could have been profitable by charging for their services. Like Vimeo. Fyi, Vimeo was a money-losing business when IAC bought it 2006 and is still unprofitable after IAC spun it out as a public company in May 2021. So it's not convincing that Youtube could have stayed independent and become profitable by charging for videos. Before the Google acquisition, Youtube was also threatened by the billion dollar Viacom lawsuit. The young Youtube startup didn't have the money to fight expensive legal battles like that and could realistically lose in court like Napster lost against the RIAA lawsuit. Youtube getting acquired by Google got the video startup out of several fires: (1) switch to Google's datacenter infrastructure which reduces operating costs (2) tap into Google's extensive ad network to monetize (3) use Google's army of lawyers to settle with Viacom by convincing them that the ContentID fingerprinting algorithm will filter out piracy.
shagie 4y ago
Instagram c. 2012 was just burning VC money and had no plans for how it could be profitable. It wasn't until Facebook bought them that there was some thought about how to make it profitable. https://www.fastcompany.com/3019351/will-instagrams-vogue-like-ads-spoil-the-user-experience https://www.fastcompany.com/3019351/will-instagrams-vogue-li... > On Thursday, the company announced that it would begin introducing photo and video advertisements on the service, its first attempt to generate revenue since Facebook acquired the startup for $1 billion. > ... > It’s a sentiment Systrom has repeated to me for years–and an idea that many revenue-free startups have begun parroting. For entrepreneurs without a business model, it’s become almost fashionable to declare that they’re simply creating a new model altogether: Whatever it is–by god–won’t involve pesky traditional ads. No! The ads won’t be disruptive or annoying–they’ll be wanted and loved! (I’m waiting for the call, SnapChat.) But when push comes to shove, more often than not, the ads turn out to be nothing more than, well, traditional advertisements. See: any Promoted Tweets. Yes, it was on track to be something big... but it wasn't on track to be able to make any money and was more likely to flounder once it ran out of VC interest and get bought for cheap by Twitter. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/instagram-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/instagram-statistics/ There's a reason that chart only starts listing revenue in 2015. While Instagram might have been keeping Zuckerberg up at night with nightmares - one shouldn't pretend that it had a path to making money and being able to keep running.
- passwordoops 4y ago
  And in a world where competition is allowed to see its course, Instagram would have disappeared. And further down the line, Facebook's poor decisions would have spelled oblivion for them too. It also means the 2010s may have perhaps seen investors print billions into businesses that actually matter and deliver real innovation
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Or it just would have copied Instagram’s feature set like it’s done dozens of times with other competitors. Or it would have just hired all of its founders to recreate it. Do you now also want to stop acquihires?

scarface74 4y ago

How was Instagram going to become profitable? YouTube’s issue wasn’t just being sued, the storage and bandwidth costs are huge and YouTube was losing billions. Rumors are that YouTube is still not profitable.

kennywinker 4y ago
Ads or a subscription service. Not that complicated. With that many eyeballs you don’t need to be a genius to make money off it.
- Tanoc 4y ago
  Google over-leveraged advertising on Youtube however. Most Youtube viewers use an adblocker on PC, and adblock is becoming more common on Android with each passing month. All because AdSense went with a more lax policy of moderation for ads after the 2017 fallout caused by Matt Watson scared away big advertisers like Frito-Lay and Toyota. The result was all ads were either falsely advertised Android games, multi-level marketing scams, or even nakedly racist political ads in the runup to the 2018 congressional elections. Adblock rates exploded, cutting Youtube's income and causing a panic response of running even more ads and locking users into seeing them. To this day Youtube still has a lax vetting policy for advertising partners, and actively hateful, harmful, or overtly false ads stay up for weeks until enough users report them. As for subscriptions... Well, they tried that with Youtube Red. And then Youtube Premium. And then Youtube Music. Every time people turned it down, because the benefits weren't worth the cost each month considering all the features touted could be found legally for free elsewhere. And when video creators outed Red by showing they'd get a paltry amount of that revenue, despite Youtube saying the money from subscriptions would be used to pay them, even more of the viewing audience turned against it. When you're in the uniquely precarious position of hosting high cost user-generated content, it's very easy for outside forces to break you over their knee and send you into a death spiral.
- scarface74 4y ago
  How are ad supported companies outside of Google and Facebook doing today?
dima_vm 4y ago
"We run ads, senator." (c) Mark
- scarface74 4y ago
  YouTube took years and only became slightly profitable after burning through billions of Google’s money and then only by piggybacking off of Google’s existing infrastructure and ad network.
  - mrkurt 4y ago
    YouTube is a tremendous antitrust fail. The very definition of price dumping. It could have been profitable earlier, but it would have been much smaller and faced stiff competition. That isn't what Google needed from it.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      How could YouTube be profitable earlier as it’s bandwidth and storage costs grew? Is every company that is not immediately producing a profitable product “price dumping” - including every startup YC funds?
      - mrkurt 4y ago
        Price dumping is a bigger deal when it's a company in a monopoly position doing it. It's not necessarily anti competitive to sell at below cost. YouTube could have been profitable by charging for their services. Like Vimeo. They could not have been profitable with ads. Google couldn't afford for YouTube to be small, they needed a near monopoly on internet video to extend their ad empire.
        jasode 4y ago
        >YouTube could have been profitable by charging for their services. Like Vimeo. Fyi, Vimeo was a money-losing business when IAC bought it 2006 and is still unprofitable after IAC spun it out as a public company in May 2021. So it's not convincing that Youtube could have stayed independent and become profitable by charging for videos. Before the Google acquisition, Youtube was also threatened by the billion dollar Viacom lawsuit. The young Youtube startup didn't have the money to fight expensive legal battles like that and could realistically lose in court like Napster lost against the RIAA lawsuit. Youtube getting acquired by Google got the video startup out of several fires: (1) switch to Google's datacenter infrastructure which reduces operating costs (2) tap into Google's extensive ad network to monetize (3) use Google's army of lawyers to settle with Viacom by convincing them that the ContentID fingerprinting algorithm will filter out piracy.

shagie 4y ago

Instagram c. 2012 was just burning VC money and had no plans for how it could be profitable. It wasn't until Facebook bought them that there was some thought about how to make it profitable. https://www.fastcompany.com/3019351/will-instagrams-vogue-like-ads-spoil-the-user-experience https://www.fastcompany.com/3019351/will-instagrams-vogue-li... > On Thursday, the company announced that it would begin introducing photo and video advertisements on the service, its first attempt to generate revenue since Facebook acquired the startup for $1 billion. > ... > It’s a sentiment Systrom has repeated to me for years–and an idea that many revenue-free startups have begun parroting. For entrepreneurs without a business model, it’s become almost fashionable to declare that they’re simply creating a new model altogether: Whatever it is–by god–won’t involve pesky traditional ads. No! The ads won’t be disruptive or annoying–they’ll be wanted and loved! (I’m waiting for the call, SnapChat.) But when push comes to shove, more often than not, the ads turn out to be nothing more than, well, traditional advertisements. See: any Promoted Tweets. Yes, it was on track to be something big... but it wasn't on track to be able to make any money and was more likely to flounder once it ran out of VC interest and get bought for cheap by Twitter. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/instagram-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/instagram-statistics/ There's a reason that chart only starts listing revenue in 2015. While Instagram might have been keeping Zuckerberg up at night with nightmares - one shouldn't pretend that it had a path to making money and being able to keep running.

passwordoops 4y ago
And in a world where competition is allowed to see its course, Instagram would have disappeared. And further down the line, Facebook's poor decisions would have spelled oblivion for them too. It also means the 2010s may have perhaps seen investors print billions into businesses that actually matter and deliver real innovation
- scarface74 4y ago
  Or it just would have copied Instagram’s feature set like it’s done dozens of times with other competitors. Or it would have just hired all of its founders to recreate it. Do you now also want to stop acquihires?