[dima_vm]

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.

[shagie]

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-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/

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]

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]

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.

[dima_vm]

"We run ads, senator." (c) Mark

[kennywinker]

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.