So your favorite little startupjust got bought out by an Internet behemoth . We ’ve play this game before ! It usually does n’t turn out too well for anyone without a fiscal interest in the good deal . Which is to say : you .
https://gizmodo.com/facebooks-buying-instagram-for-a-billion-dollars-5900352
When small startups with passionate user bases are absorbed by turgid companies — think Flickr , Blogger , Brizzly , Dodgeball — it ’s typically a train wreck . Andy Baio , whose own little calendaring company , Upcoming , was buy out and subsequently wreck by Yahoo probably talk for most of us today with the following tweet .
A six - person squad bought by an net giant . Does that story ever terminate well ?
— Andy Baio ( @waxpancake)April 9 , 2012
Of naturally , both companies are promising nothing is move to change . They have to say that , and you ’d be correct to be questioning . But there ’s also a very good chance that Facebook might pull this off — if it trace a few fundamental rules .
1. Keep the Team
Instagram is famously small . And that flyspeck team has something important : vision . And a great product . And a laser - sharp stress on meliorate it without making it bloated or betraying its spirit . Often , after a small company gets buy out by a much larger one , the squad that made the Cartesian product deserving purchasing — or enough of it — split after a yoke of years .
Facebook demand to keep Instagram rip in / lineage out . Let it keep making its own hire . Do n’t fill it up with Facebookers , with a different institutional culture . Hell , do n’t make it a division that has to respond to other division . If its Centennial State - founders have to start “ interfacing ” with product team at Facebook concerned with progress to Instagram do matter Facebook ’s way , they ’re going to leave . Keeping atomic number 27 - founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger onboard and focused on mathematical product should be Facebook ’s top priority . The day you see either of them “ leaving to prosecute other interests ” is the 24-hour interval you know Instagram is dead .
2. Keep Sharing Alive
Facebook says it wants to keep Instagram tightly integrate with other social services , like Twitter and Flickr . That ’s a skillful thought , but it ’s completely antagonistic to Facebook ’s civilization . Sure , you could spell your Twitter and Flickr feeds into Facebook , but you ca n’t go the other room around — and that ’s very much by design .
Zuckerberg is avid when it hail to your digital life . He wants your data to remain in place where he can assist advertizing on it . Facebook is all about walling users off . Keeping them in The Blue to play games , read word , listen to medicine , and watch videos .
Instagram is all about exporting . Its cause of death feature is not pic processing ; it ’s portion out . It ’s grown so much precisely because its garden is open tune . Yeah , you may mature your rosebush on Instagram , but you could display them anywhere . Instagram needs to not only keep the services it has already has , but it needs to proceed to actively add more . It would be highly supporting to see Google+ consolidation , for example , just as a foretoken of near faith .
It will be extremely alluring for Facebook to keep Instagram in its own jewel box . That ca n’t happen . Unlike Facebook , what ’s post to Instagram is by and magnanimous populace . As a flood of new people post searchable , tail pic of riots , gyration , emergencies and , well , more than simply hipster - centric picture of food and fixies , Instagram will become an awful news program - gathering tool . You ’ll see it used ( even more than today ) to document the world we last in as it happens in all sorts of vital ways . If Facebook absorbs Instagram , there ’s a unspoilt chance that real - time programme net will become into something resembling CCTV .
3. Throw Nerds and Servers At It
After Yahoo bought Flickr , it did n’t give its accomplishment the resources it need . Same story when Google buy Dodgeball . And from those stumbles arose opportunity — namely Instagram and Foursquare . Facebook ca n’t make that misunderstanding . Instagram is already having some growing painful sensation . It ’s not terribly uncommon to see icon not load due to waiter issues . Facebook could heal those ills .
What ’s more , with Facebook ’s sack , Instagram could become even more critical by coming to even more platform . Windows headphone seems an obvious place to start . An factual functional World Wide Web app that I can browse from my data processor ? Yes please .
4. Don’t Make It Facebook
You desire to practice Instagram ’s filters to let your uncool niece post hipster - riffic photos to her Timeline ? Fine . Put all the Instagram into Facebook that you want . But do n’t do the reversal . Keep Instagram unearthly .
Instagram does n’t need Like buttons or Pokes or other Facebook characteristic . The friend lists should n’t be ensnarl . I should n’t have to tie it to Facebook . It does n’t require any Facebook branding . It does n’t need a juicy margin . It does n’t want to move me to add my neighbor , or my boss , or anyone else I ’m Facebook “ friends ” with . And I should never , ever , ever have to export to Facebook . It ca n’t become “ Instagram , a Facebook company . ” Because if that happens , the unique net and culture its built will fly . And Facebook will just have waste a billion dollars .
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