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How Twitter’s secret offer for Instagram made Facebook pay $1B
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- azelfrath 15y agoBecause like the rest of human history, the most interesting details come to light long after everything has been said and done.
- rollypolly 15y agoMicrosoft was the worst but not the first. Apple acts this way with Android, and Google has been paranoid for a few years. Great quote. It makes me wonder if other companies secretly vied for Instagram besides Twitter. I'm sure Google and Microsoft would've been interested in them. Maybe Facebook's seemingly outrageous offer was the only way to keep everyone at bay.
- ableal 15y agoI like the earlier bit of the quotation, more general and insightful: “These huge West Coast companies, peopled mostly by kids who cannot believe their good luck, commonly turn paranoid and think everyone is out to get them,” veteran columnist and broadcaster John Dvorak told VentureBeat. I'm also reminded of the old potato chip commercial where Jay Leno went "eat all you want, we'll make more".
- wmeredith 15y agoJohn Dvorak is a self-admitted professional troll. If he's being insightful, it's on accident.
- sparknlaunch12 15y agoSystrom took $1b instead of twitters lower offer? There is talk that this purchase was strategic to prevent twitter or google buying a photo platform. Whatever happened this story is not black and white. This sort of money is crazy.
- ams6110 15y agoZuckerberg, we’re told, lives in perpetual anxiety, preoccupied by the fear of Facebook losing its place, terrified that youngsters will get their social networking fix from other services. That fear served as the catalyst behind his decision to buy Instagram and keep it out of the hands of a cross-town competitor. Paranoia is by definition irrational. I don't see this ending well.
- alaskamiller 15y agoSee Andy Grove.
- hkmurakami 15y agoThen again it was Andy Grove who said, "Only the Paranoid Survive"
- spdy 15y agoThis is a very good thing inside a company who can only grow through innovation. Imagine Zuck starting to become laid back and happy about what he has achieved. Facebook would be obsolet within 1-2 years. He has to be on the lookout all the time to kill threats to his company whenever he can.
- jasonwatkinspdx 15y agoKilling threats is innovation?
- nostrademons 15y agoYou can't innovate through fear - it kills creativity. When you're afraid, you tend to get tunnel vision and can't see beyond the threats, and everything you make becomes a derivative of them. To the extent that Google manages to innovate (and we don't always - we've caught a lot of flack for that lately), I suspect it's because of the layer of middle-management whose only job is to stand between the paranoia of the executives and the creativity of the engineers & PMs. Well-functioning teams here always seem to have a strong leader that basically takes all the shit from above and lets only the high-level direction from the executives reach the engineers, filtering out all the fear and capricious whims.
- justinph 15y agoJohn Dvorak is a commentator quoted in the story. Why do people continue to take anything this guy says seriously? He's been wrong so many times about so many things in the past.
- seiji 15y agoA broken clock is still right twice a day. The oddest secret of success is that you never feel successful. You feel someone else is always almost about to dethrone you. Imagine if you had unlimited funds to defend your delusions.
- officialchicken 15y ago>Imagine if you had unlimited funds to defend your delusions. I'd hire the crack tech writing team of Devorak, Cringley, Arrington, and Siegler to work full time on my never-to-be-published biography.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- joshu 15y agoNoshop is usually signed before a term sheet is agreed upon. Little details being off like this always make me wonder a out the rest of the details in articles.
- alain94040 15y agoNot necessarily, I can issue a term sheet, show it to you, it includes a no-shop clause, and you never sign the term sheet.
- guynamedloren 15y agoIf anybody was still wondering, yes, Facebook's Instagram acquisition was entirely defensive. That, more than anything, explains the $1BN price tag.
- mkramlich 15y agoYep. The most rational explanation for that valuation was that it was irrational. I truly think that was the thought process, whether consciously or subconscious. It sure as hell wasn't based on revenue.
- cmbaus1 15y agoI speculated that this might be the case. http://baus.net/instagram-is-twitter-the-loser http://baus.net/instagram-is-twitter-the-loser Strangely, Chris Sacca and Jack Dorsey were both investors in Instagram and they still lost the deal. I suspect it just got to rich for them. I don't think this bodes well for Twitter.
- Porter_423 15y agoIf the buy decision was based on paranoia, and Facebook was that worried that Twitter acquiring Instagram was enough to topple Facebook - then how in the hell can anyone justify a $100+ billion valuation of Facebook?
- EREFUNDO 15y agowell played....well played....
- RandallBrown 15y agoThis makes more sense to me. At first I didn't get it because Facebook already dominates mobile photos. I would guess Facebook's mobile apps do considerably more photo sharing than Instagram did. If you add a photo network on to twitter though, it becomes a lot more of a facebook competitor and I can see people giving up on Facebook and moving their main social networking to Twitter. I can see that being scary to Facebook.
- jasonwatkinspdx 15y agoSadly this will be seen as a clever example to emulate, rather than the critique it should be. Do you want to play poker or build a better world?
- brianobush 15y agowould have been neat combination with twitter me thinks. I feel Instagram will be sidelined in the future to focus on the FB quarterly earnings machine.
- parasight 15y agoIs it that simple? Scare Marc and he throws money at you.