Instagram Is Estimated To Be Worth More Than $100 Billion (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Facebook's Instagram is estimated to be worth more than $100 billion, if it were a stand-alone company, marking a 100-fold return for the app purchased in 2012, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence. The photo-sharing platform, which reached 1 billion monthly active users earlier this month, will likely help nudge Instagram revenue past $10 billion over the next 12 months, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jitendra Waral wrote in a report Monday. Instagram is attracting new users faster than Facebook's main site and is on track to exceed 2 billion users within the next five years, Waral said. While the social network already has surpassed that milestone, Instagram's audience is younger than its parent, making it more attractive to advertisers. And unlike Facebook, Instagram is still growing in the U.S.

Comments

Bubblegram reaches 100 billion chucky tokens

[xack]

Been there seen that. We just had the cryptocrash and now we are looking for a new breed of tulip to plant.

Re:Bubblegram reaches 100 billion chucky tokens

[Oswald McWeany]

Been there seen that. We just had the cryptocrash and now we are looking for a new breed of tulip to plant.

I wouldn't call crypto a tulip scenario; when the bubble burst on bitcoin it lost 2/3rds of it's value but was still many times more valuable than where it had been a year before that... it's a long slow decline with some ups for bitcoin now.

I wouldn't call Instagram to be a tulip scenario either as their is no hype to invest in it,etc. "e products" are very volatile though, and Instagram could easily be worth half or less their value in a year... that's the way services like that go. Not that I expect them to nosedive. They'll probably be viable for a while longer.

Re:Bubblegram reaches 100 billion chucky tokens

[afidel]

If their revenue estimates are even somewhat accurate then it's hardly tulips, 8x current revenue (say 30x net profits?) is hardly a huge premium for a company that is still growing rapidly.

Re: Bubblegram reaches 100 billion chucky tokens

[reanjr]

People think Bitcoin is like tulips. They are right.

People think there was a bubble in Dutch tulips. They are mistaken. There was a bubble in tulip FUTURES.

Futures are like the CDOs and other derivative instruments that brought about the 2008 financial collapse.

Tulip futures bubbled for a season. Bitcoin has been rising for a decade.

You are a low information voter, too, I bet...

Re: Bubblegram reaches 100 billion chucky tokens

[Anonymous Coward]

You could say the same thing 6 months into the dot com bubble. At that point the nasdaq was still up in relation to the year before but it eventually fell even more.

Re: Bubblegram reaches 100 billion chucky tokens

[Anonymous Coward]

I never see a need for any of these stupid Instagrams. Just like I know that stock market is a scam, a legalized outlet for gamblers.

Re:Bubblegram reaches 100 billion chucky tokens

[ceoyoyo]

You might be a bit optimistic on Instagram profit. I couldn't find any actual numbers but social media companies don't seem to have quite the profit margins you'd think they should. They love to talk about revenue though.

The bigger problem: P/E of 30 isn't so bad for a rapidly growing company with lots of potential. But what about a company who's users already comprise a large fraction of the population of the planet? How much can Instagram actually grow? And if it does manage to double it's profits, is 15-20 years for breakeven (of a social media company) reasonable?

Re:Bubblegram reaches 100 billion chucky tokens

[afidel]

Facebook's net profit margin is 27%, gross is 47%, I assumed that Instagram would be at least as good.

Re:Bubblegram reaches 100 billion chucky tokens

[ctilsie242]

I don't see any point or purpose for Instagram. If I want to share photos, I have my web server or Smugmug. Photo editing? GIMP or other tools. Need an app? There are commercial ones for a few bucks which respect privacy.

I understand it is doing well, but what can Instagram do that other things cannot, other than slurp your data for resale in bulk, which is not something I consider a "feature" for me.

Re:Bubblegram reaches 100 billion chucky tokens

[ceoyoyo]

You might be right, although Facebook has only reached those dizzying heights in the last few years... as their growth slowed. In 2015 their gross was half what it is now. Software companies can rack up high margins once all there is to do is keep the servers ticking over and do a cosmetic release now and then.

Even 30x though... for a company with growth potential fine, but Instagram's revenue is pretty tightly coupled to the count of wealthy eyeballs, and they've already got a good chunk of the eyeballs in existence, probably quite skewed towards the wealthy ones.

Re:Bubblegram reaches 100 billion chucky tokens

[Oswald McWeany]

I don't see any point or purpose for Instagram. If I want to share photos, I have my web server or Smugmug. Photo editing? GIMP or other tools. Need an app? There are commercial ones for a few bucks which respect privacy.

I understand it is doing well, but what can Instagram do that other things cannot, other than slurp your data for resale in bulk, which is not something I consider a "feature" for me.

Well I wouldn't create an account with Instagram for the pure reason that it is owned by Facebook and I refuse to touch anything Facebook.

Re: Bubblegram reaches 100 billion chucky tokens

[Anonymous Coward]

When the apocalypse comes, I might be willing to accept your US dollars in exchange for food I grow. There's no way I'm accepting a string of digits on paper representing a Bitcoin transaction in exchange for the food I grow since less than 1% of the people on the planet would accept it.

Until that changes, Bitcoin is exactly like tulip futures.

Re: Bubblegram reaches 100 billion chucky tokens

[Anonymous Coward]

Itâ(TM)s strength is that it is effortless.

You can take a picture (and increasingly, on instagram, a vertical video) with your phone, tap your screen a few times to crop. process and share. Soon after, your friends, family and other followers are effortlessly hitting the â(TM)¥ï button and youâ(TM)re receiving dopamine hits from the social engagement.

Its apparent frivolity may be its strength. Itâ(TM)s easy to use and a photo update is a lot faster to scan than a tweet or an email. That means most people you know (unless youâ(TM)re the type to read Slashdot) are using it. Increasingly itâ(TM)s the easiest way to send a message to a friend or acquaintance, because theyâ(TM)re all there and with so few choices in the app itself, messages arenâ(TM)t easily overlooked.

Re:Bubblegram reaches 100 billion chucky tokens

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is the billion dollar revenue stream coming from? Do you have to pay to setup an account? Maybe they use aggressive ads every time you sign into and use the service? Maybe they archive and sell all the user data that comes through it's servers? Are they required to release the companies balance sheet and other financial details before someone decides to say the company is worth billions? Other than that I fails to see how they value the company based on the number of users when the users can sign up for free. More than likely it is just a massive pump and dump investment scheme to create windfall profits for the few at the top right before the application goes balls up.

Re:Bubblegram reaches 100 billion chucky tokens

[Teun]

Simple, it is as with the stock value of an oil company, the reserves they have for future production is what's counted.
Here it's as with anything infected with Facebook, Google or Twitter, the user is the product.
Bloomberg figured out you can make this much money spamming the soon to be 2000 million idiots that have handed over their soul.
That requires for the next few years on average US$50 of potential profit per subscriber, it'll be less for the Africans and Indians but more for the Europeans and North Americans.

Not with me :)

Re:Bubblegram reaches 100 billion chucky tokens

[Anonymous Coward]

whose users
its profits

On the internet nobody knows you're a niggur. Unless you write like one.

Re: Bubblegram reaches 100 billion chucky tokens

[reanjr]

Why would you accept dollars? To burn? You know dollars are backed by the U.S., right? If there's no U.S., dollars don't have value, similar to the way that if there's no Internet, Bitcoin has no value.

So, the question is, which will sustain an apocalypse: the United States or the Internet?

Ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

But seriously, how much is it worth?

Re: Ha!

[reanjr]

However much you can sell it for on the open market.

Re: Ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

To you? Two chickens and your first-born son, and that's a bargain at twice the price, mate.

A better way to look at valuation

[Dzimas]

If Boeing went out of business tomorrow, there would be a global aircraft shortage. If Instagram unplugged its servers, the world would continue unaffected.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

There are other aircraft manufacturers (Airbus, Bombardier, etc.) but your point is still somewhat valid.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

Airbus couldn't ramp up production fast enough to prevent manufacturing shortages in the short to medium term. Worse, there would be no competition to push innovation and force competitive pricing.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[ceoyoyo]

A billion food bloggers and selfie-takers just felt a disturbance in the force....

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[sinij]

The value of the company like Instagram is what they know about you, not what they do.

Instagram knows about you a lot more than Boeing, and if Instagram went bankrupt A LOT of data would be sold to the highest bidder. Consequences of such data release would be unpredictable.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[jellomizer]

The part of Instagram that is its value, is the number of young customers on its site, who are the future economic drivers.

Lets say Exon Mobile went out of business tomorrow, Millions if not Billions of people will be affected as they have the immediate need for fuel, and Exon Mobile is a major producer the loss of the company would cause a short term set of problems until competitors can ramp up to meet demand.

Now if Solar City went out of business that would probably drive down Solar Power Adoption, but will not cause any major problems. Those with Solar Panels will still work, those without can continue on with their lives. However its loss would slowly affect the future. Without Adoption of Affordable Clean Energy solutions we will be increasing pollution, which will cause other economic factors.

Instagram is how young people communicate, Facebook is how us older people communicate. Killing Instagram today, could mean today's kids when they get into the market and want to communicate with business contacts will probably be split up across many competing services.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in IT, and it feels like there is a dot com bubble happening with valuations becoming ludicrously high, like amazons' 266+PE, NFLX PE 239. google fb, msft 27-30 PE.

And whle sectors of highly technical manufacturing, MAGIC level manufacturing, is rolling in sub 8 PE land.

Re: A better way to look at valuation

[reanjr]

And the fact those contact lists will inevitably split is why neither will ever succeed in become a de facto form of communication. Instagram's growth is a flash in the pan. Social networks grow into unusability. It's inevitable.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually you're very wrong. Boeing can't even keep up with demand for their own product. How the f*** do you think other manufactures would be able to just step in and make up for the difference?

Hint: Look at the wait-list for 787's.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

Consequences of such data release would be unpredictable.

Most likely a realization how worthless that data really is.

Whenever one of those social media data collectors gets sold they end up at a bigger social media collector that still doesn't know how to turn a profit. It's a pyramid scheme with data instead of money.

Re: A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

The Westworld effect

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[easyTree]

If Boeing went out of business tomorrow, there would be a global aircraft shortage. If Instagram unplugged its servers, the world would continue unaffected.

Hello? Pictures of food do not share themselves.

Re: A better way to look at valuation

[reanjr]

I wonder how it stacks up if you include dividends. Lots of the older, stable industries (including MS to be fair) pay out decent dividends which keeps the P/E down.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

If instagram unplugged its servers, the world would become more productive (even if marginally), and the global aircraft shortage would be exasperated.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[The Fat Bastard]

A lot of wannabe Instagram models would be crying if Instagram went away. Casey Neistat gave a shoutout for a model at his wife's company who can't get booked at some modeling gigs without having 30K+ followers on Instragram. The model went from 4K to 43K in Instagram followers in a few days.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Boeing probably knows more about me than Instagram does. After all, I've flown on airplanes, and they probably collect data from each flight.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[hjf]

Sooooo Boeing doesn't bleed tax money?

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[argStyopa]

Arguably, the world might even become a little bit better place. /crankyoldman

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

who?

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

How are the neighbors' goats and kids these days?

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

Blah, blah, Casey Neistat, blah, blah, Stephen King, blah, blah, blah...

Somebody please mod "The Fat Bastard" crap down!

creimer's child bride retired military buddy suggested to him to "hide in plain sight" so creimer picked up "The Fat Bastard" as his new sock puppet user name!

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[eepok]

Instagram is how young people communicate, Facebook is how us older people communicate. Killing Instagram today, could mean today's kids when they get into the market and want to communicate with business contacts will probably be split up across many competing services.

Let's not over-inflate Instagram or Facebook as general "communication". It's how people chat about less-important things. Yes, some conversations have significant value, but neither platform is built to facilitate thoughtful conversation and thus it doesn't happen to the extent people like to think it does.

If Facebook and Instagram were to die, people would find another place to chat. Communication would continue on, unabated, via email, phone, forums, in-person conversation, and the like.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are some posts from creimer's old account that was blocked and renamed by Slashdot management. I'll start with his love of child brides.

If all my assets were liquidated, I would still have enough cash to buy a new car and head off to Mexico to find a chica to marry.
https://slashdot.org/comments....

You're aware that are some states in the U.S. that allow underage marriage as young as 14 years old?
https://slashdot.org/comments....
As for my comment, I've heard stories of engineers retiring at 50, moving to Mexico and marrying underage girls. Since I work with ex-military, the Philippines is a popular retirement spot for marrying underage girls as well. It's all about getting the most bang for your retirement dollars.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
That only works if you retire to Mexico, build a mansion (by local standards), marry an underage sweet thing and bequeath all your possessions to the village.
https://slashdot.org/comments....

You need to be more specific. I wrote 3,000+ comments this year.
https://slashdot.org/comments....

Nah... I just do it to piss off my trolls and make coffee money off of them.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
We have different priorities. You want to climb the corporate ladder. I want to own the corporate ladder.
https://slashdot.org/comments....

Your bitch licks your balls. Most people don't brag about practicing bestiality. Is there a reason why you married a dog and not a goat?
https://slashdot.org/comments....

My employers don't care about what my Slashdot trolls think. Now go off and lick your balls somewhere else.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
iPhone 6s and reduce my monthly bill from $80 to $50. As a phone and a video camera, the iPhone 6s isn't obsolete. As a Sprint customer for 20+ years, Sprint will always offer me a new iPhone if I decide to stop using the 6s as a phone in the next several years.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Miracle workers are never afraid to ask for a second opinion. Supervisor gave me his opinion ? and a mess to clean up. Lesson learned from this incident: if something isn't quite broken, break it.
https://slashdot.org/comments....

So you can turn around call me a liar again? People have been playing that game with me for years.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Based on what I've read about Uber, he need to tell the boys to clean up their locker room behavior, zip up their pants, and attend sensitivity training until everyone agrees that women are not sexual objects.
https://slashdot.org/comments....

Which doesn't violate the Slashdot TOS. If you got a problem with that, take it up with management.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
This year I've posted ~4,000 comments.
https://slashdot.org/comments....

I don't bother with mod points. I'm doing something much more sinister. It took te

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

Give my regards to Stosh Money. ;)

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

facebook is shrinking, people are turning away from it daily. young people don't use it as much because it's 'not cool'. it gets constantly slammed over privacy concerns, and now with also aiding the 'analytics' companies that fed the trump campaign.

instagram is growing, still, it isn't as old of a service. people don't realize it has the same privacy implications as facebook. it was 'cool' when facebook wasn't, because it wasn't facebook. it was 'new' and 'fresh' and mom wasn't on it. it's actually lost a lot of its "coolness" with the kids. it's all about snapchat, and has been for a few years now.

but the site is worth 100 billion dollars *because it isn't called facebook*. you change the name to 'facebook photos' or roll the entire feature set into facebook itself and its value tanks, hard.. like, to z.e.r.o.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

If Instagram unplugged its servers, the world would continue unaffected.

Except for the hilarity as a bunch of hipsters can no longer post images about their meal, or posing next to someone's expensive car to pretend they're famous.

But, for you and me, yes .. never seen it, don't care.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

yes that is how aircraft assembly lines work. when all those planes are bought, they have to shut down the line. they want to keep the line open as long as possible.

if you want your plane early you put down your deposit early.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends. A lot of people have secret affairs on these sites. Find the people worth 7 figures and see how much they'll pay to keep a secret.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[nitehawk214]

There are other social media companies too. And its much easier to transfer between them.

Yeah, a few people that don't have backups would be fucked, but those people are inconsequential. Anyone that cares about their photos has local backups.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

Instagram is how young people communicate, Facebook is how us older people communicate. Killing Instagram today, could mean today's kids when they get into the market and want to communicate with business contacts will probably be split up across many competing services.

Not only that, some of them might end up in the big blue room with the yellow circle on the ceiling!

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a special kind of dumb fuck if you're old enough to know better and still use Facebook to communicate.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

Say hi to Chad at Rust, Armenis & Schwartz, you bankrupt loser!

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

Trivia Fact: One of the greatest bankrupt losers in American history was Abraham Lincoln who got stuck with a grocery store after his partners abandoned him.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt anything illegal could even get into the same ballpark as that imaginary valuation, certainly not before getting caught.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

True fact: Comparing yourself to other people doesn't make you similar to them!

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[hey!]

Actual importance has never been a factor in valuation -- otherwise the most valuable thing on the planet would be air, which is proverbially free.

This is an argument against the attitude that income and wealth are somehow indicators of social contribution. A park ranger or trash collector contributes more to society than a senior engineer at Instagram, but doesn't make anything like the money. People who can fill the role are rarer, and therefore command a higher market price, even though they're creating a service that no consumer would pay money for.

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Hognoxious]

What? They don't have incredibly expensive spare factories and productions lines sitting around collecting dust just on the off-chance?

I blame the MBAs

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Hognoxious]

the global aircraft shortage would be exasperated.

Understatement. It'd be positively livid!

Re:A better way to look at valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

That's called defense spending.

You mean 100 billion apps!

[Anonymous Coward]

Only apps can app apps, and Appstagram is worth 100 billion appy app apps, NOT LUDDITE dollars!

Apps!

Re:You mean 100 billion apps!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, App Guy!

Re:You mean 100 billion apps!

[easyTree]

Yeah; bring back PizzaAnalogyGuy, I say.

Re: You mean 100 billion apps!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was always partial to BadAnalogyGuy

Does that make them suckers?

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is why it isn't always the best idea to sell out. If instagram just kept doing it's thing and let facebook faceplant then they would be the #1 platform instead of just facebook's #1 best buy.

Re: Does that make them suckers?

[reanjr]

Or Facebook would have found another way to crush them. Just look at SNAP.

Re:Does that make them suckers?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Maybe, maybe not. Snapchat turned down an offer. And FB took them on. Whereas Instagram was grown by FB.

Re:Does that make them suckers?

[king neckbeard]

I'd be fine with being a sucker if I got as much money as they did.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Is that is true

[110010001000]

...then Facebook is worth 6.25 times that since Instagram is about 16% of Facebooks revenue (and all of this is based on revenue, not profits). So Facebook is worth $625 billion. Facebooks market cap is $560B. It has a P/E of 29. Conclusion: buy Facebook stock now. I would buy it myself, but all my money was lost shorting Tesla.

Re:Is that is true

[afidel]

The valuation is in line with the 29x current earnings of Facebook. Take the same 27% net profit margin and multiply by the revenue and multiply by 29 and you get $78.3B, a 13% premium for a company with a faster growth rate and better underlying fundamentals (younger audience in this case) is pretty small.

Instagram is estimated to be worth something?

[DontBeAMoran]

Instagram is estimated to be worth more than $100 billion [...] The photo-sharing platform, which reached 1 billion monthly active users earlier this month...

So someone is estimating that each and every Instagram user is worth 100 US dollars?

WTF is wrong with wall street?

Re: Instagram is estimated to be worth something?

[reanjr]

They are susceptible to advertisers who convinced them ads are valuable.

Between marketeers, investors, and corporate customers, there's a whole lot of mass delusion going on in the ad space. Frankly, I think it's a sign that corporations are making too much profit, and their leadership is too incompetent to know where to re-invest, so they just dump it into marketing.

Re:Instagram is estimated to be worth something?

[easyTree]

The chasm between them and reality is now widening at such a rate that it's unlikely to snap back.

Re:Instagram is estimated to be worth something?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Or, each user is worth $4/month over a 2 year period. That's not a bad price, when you consider advertising rates...

Re:Instagram is estimated to be worth something?

[DontBeAMoran]

I still don't understand how users would be "worth" $4/month in the first place. If the internet was free and devices were free too, I couldn't complain.

But right now, advertisting companies should be paying users to display ads on their devices. It's our bandwidth, our monthly quotas, our devices.

Re: Instagram is estimated to be worth something?

[ceoyoyo]

The true brilliance of marketing. All that psychological manipulation isn't actually to convince consumers to buy stuff, it's to convince business that you can convince consumers to buy stuff.

Re:Instagram is estimated to be worth something?

[LynnwoodRooster]

If you're selling a $399 consumer widget, and for people interested in the category of your widget tend to buy them at a rate of 2% based on exposure, I could pay $200 and pretty much guarantee a sale, on Instagram.

Ad companies indirectly pay users for displaying ads - they fund services like Instagram, Facebook, Google Maps, etc. via paying Facebook and Google for ads to you. Would you prefer to pay a $9.95/month subscription to Google Maps? Pay for GMail/Google Drive/tools $15/month like you pay for Microsoft Office? Would you like to pay $4.95/month + $10/GB of storage for your photo backups? Or would you rather advertisers pay Google, Instagram, etc. for ads shown to you, and you get their other services for free?

Think of it as Pandora with ads versus Pandora Premium without ads. You get ads if you want the free service; you get no ads if you want to pay. At the end of the day, SOMEONE has to pay for the computers, bandwidth, connections, people that keep your information flowing and services available - it's just a question if it comes out of your pocket directly, or out of your (probably unlimited) bandwidth and eye-space.

Re:Instagram is estimated to be worth something?

[DontBeAMoran]

I wish people would stop paying ads for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, yes.

Re: Instagram is estimated to be worth something?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not like the end game of that scenario, though ad companies seem far more successful at selling themselves than products or services.

Re:Instagram is estimated to be worth something?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google maps is useful, instagram is cultural poison.

ProTip

[easyTree]

You could double your perceived value if you'd FIX YOUR NON-PERSISTENT PINCH-ZOOM RETARDATION!!!

Seriously, UI design is a thing.

No it's not

[nagora]

No one would ever make $100Bn back on Instagram because it would be obsolete before you could ever make enough cash from selling the users' data.

Re:No it's not

[PJ6]

No one would ever make $100Bn back on Instagram because it would be obsolete before you could ever make enough cash from selling the users' data.

You just shot down your own argument in the same sentence you made it.

What if it's the already-collected users' data that is worth most of that $100B?

Basic Math

[Luthair]

Instagram has less than half the number of users as Facebook so in order to grow faster it only needs to gain slightly more than half as many users as Facebook did... Further as there are a finite number of people on the planet the more users either platform has the more difficult to add more it becomes.

Sigh.

[ledow]

"will likely help nudge Instagram revenue past $10 billion over the next 12 months... and is on track to exceed 2 billion users within the next five years"

So you're telling me that you make $5 a user a year? How? Where? Doing what? Who's paying that? Why are they paying that? What are they getting back for that $5?

Advertisers really are a special kind of insane.

Re:Sigh.

[lexman098]

$5 per year doesn't actually seem that high, especially if you consider that multiple separate advertisers are probably paying for the same information. Ever done a survey for a free cookie or something? That's like 20 cents they're paying each individual for a few survey questions. Compare that paltry data to what Instagram has on some people.

Estimated by who?

[aglider]

Estimated accordingly to which values?

Points at easyTree

[Anonymous Coward]

Hideki!

What do they do?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I last asked someone what Instagram does, their description made it sounds like it's basically just flickr: a photo file hosting service. (Maybe with some bells and whistles?)

I can see how this would be useful to people who don't have hard disks (and hard disks start at around $50 and only get more expensive from there). Or if you want to share your photos on the web, but if you can't get Apache working, flickr or instagram might be a good idea for you too. (But isn't flickr more established?)

None of this explains how a photo hosting company could be worth so much, though, so it makes me think that if I actually sign up, I'm going to see more than just photo hosting. What is it?

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

How is this possible?

[Vegan Cyclist]

I haven't used the iOS app in some time, but the Android app is a total and utter piece of crap. The people responsible for programming it are about as credible as this estimated valuation.

Yesterday I tried creating a post, and the text wouldn't populate. The image would appear, but no text. Couldn't reply to people either. Yes, it was the latest version. Is this how a $100 billion app is supposed to function?

It's plagued with problems like this, plus so much more is wrong with it - from unreliable and seemingly random notifications to the non-chronological timeline, to inane interaction 'rules' (like how for the longest time to reply to someone you pretty much had to type out their handle - this is finally better at least). The people programming and designing this are being rewarded for just about the worst-functioning app out there. What a world.

Re:How is this possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

The app works just fine for everyone. It's probably because you are a vegan, old or both.

Re:How is this possible?

[CryptoBear]

Damn old vegans, ruining society.

Re:How is this possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, it's a POS. I use it every day. It helps a bit to force close it and then re-open before making a post, but it still has a lot of issues. Some changes I would absolutely make for the next version:
1) If I'm typing a message and tap someone's name/handle while a cursor is active, add the @name to my message; don't navigate to their account.
2) When typing the initial message on a post, put a number in the footer indicating the number of allowed hashtags remaining. It only allows 30, but if you go over, the app silently discards your entire text content and then posts the picture anyway with no text. That's unacceptable. At least throw a warning, don't post, and give the user a chance to edit. A simple regex could check this.
3) The direct messaging bit needs to be accessible from the main UI. I still can't find it most of the time.
4) There needs to be an editor for the auto-suggest list on hashtags, I have some typos in mine I can never remove, that get prioritized over terms that I do use all the time.
5) This has gotten better over time (smaller chance of occurring), but sometimes after selecting and cropping a picture it just turns into a black box, and instagram has to be restarted to get out of that. Multiple picture posts are rather dangerous in this regard since images after the first can corrupt and you won't know this until the post.

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Re:First!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to say it but if we can't be assured that there won't be massive voter fraud by illegal aliens then Trump will need to suspend the midterm elections :(

Wow Such Company Very Value

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep moving those shells around gais, theres still some plebs who dont have their retirements in your stock market shennanigags.

Someone is smoking crack.

[Anonymous Coward]

Huge red flag that we are well within another tech bubble.

Headline written by financial incompetents

[Anonymous Coward]

Instagram is not "worth" $100B. Here's how non-public valuations work (i.e., private companies or business units of public companies that aren't subjected to a stand-alone market trading test): analysts arbitrarily make them up based on what they THINK could POTENTIALLY happen. Especially in tech, rampant lying and fairy tale projections drastically impact the valuations.

Some generally accepted classic valuation methods would be 2-3x revenues or 3-5x EBITDA. Is Instagram producing $33B in annual revenues? Is it netting $20B in profit?

Even stand-alone public securities can be wildly over-inflated by the market's trade valuation (market capitalization) because of phony financial wizardry by the Fed.

This is all Wall Street / Silicon Valley BS

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[account_deleted]

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What's this have to do with anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it's about instagram but it's barely related to Dzimas' post and barely related to the article. It's all about you promoting your friend who probably doesn't even know you exist. 'Promoting your agenda' as you say. At the detriment of everyone here who is here to get the news and have a discussion which is the purpose of this site.

The numerous people like you trying to ecke out a little extra cash from their blogs and crap are a negative externality on every legitimate business on the internet that allows free form posting in any capacity. People on Slashdot recognize this because we're one of the few communities with a large concentration of users who knew how the internet used to be before the instagram whores, casy nadnats, and cre!mers of the world brought about the social media spam revolution.

Your behavior is normalized on the rest of the internet so why don't you fuckoff to reddit and leave us be?

Re:What's this have to do with anything?

[The Fat Bastard]

It's all about you promoting your friend who probably doesn't even know you exist.

I'm not friends with either Casey Neistat or Casey Neistat's wife's model. I was pointing out an example that Instagram would have on the world of modeling if it was to shutdown. That is a more relevant point to Instagram than Boeing shutting down.

The numerous people like you trying to ecke out a little extra cash from their blogs and crap are a negative externality on every legitimate business on the internet that allows free form posting in any capacity.

My Slashdot account has no bio, no sig and no external. What blogs have I promoted in my comments?

cre!mers

If you have something to say to him, you can leave a message on his channel Assuming, of course, he haven't already banned you.

Re:What's this have to do with anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

Give my regards to Stosh Money.

Re:What's this have to do with anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comments are pretty toothless, they need more zing!

Re:What's this have to do with anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're not the dick who got his newly minted YouTube account deleted for leaving obscene comments on creimer's channel?

Re:What's this have to do with anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's much safer to access that content through a proxy. Wouldn't want to give the old coot any views.

How come that site's still up creimyweimy? Losing that DMCA touch? Tsk tsk.

This comment was factual.

Re:What's this have to do with anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

My Slashdot account has no bio, no sig and no external. What blogs have I promoted in my comments?

Nice try fatass we're not going to post links to your content. There is a link to your blog in your comment histroy yesterday In case anyone was doubting cre!mer was only here to promote his yutube channel by hook or crook there you go
https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12281018&cid=56855710#comments
Why don't you remind us about the things you said about marrying underage mexican girls?

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Re:First!

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks for your input, eternal leader Putin.