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Comment by jordhy | Hacker News Reader

I'm not very clear on the main driving factor of this acquisition: is it a talent grab, a technology acquisition or did they acquire Instagram mainly for the customer base.

FB really wanted Instagram. They've been in talks since August 2011: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/08/24/facebook-couldnt-ac...

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I feel like I can safely declare that there is no such thing as a one billion dollar talent acquisition.

Maybe in Zimbabwe, but otherwise, it doesn't seem likely, does it.

Zimbabwe dropped the Zimbabwe dollar in 2009. They now use US dollars.

Well, it certainly wouldn't happen if your company employs anyone other than Turing, Einstein, Dijkstra, and Knuth. That said, that doesn't mean that the talent isn't inflating the price at least a little bit.

Having Turing, Einstein, Dijkstra and Knuth on your team seems like the kiss of death.

If your goal is to succeed in the real world, of course it is. If your goal is to get Google to beg you to pay inappropriately large amounts of money to acquire you, it's the best idea ever.

Perhaps they found Instagram threatening. I'm betting they kill it now that they own it.

So you're betting that they just straight-up lied in their press release.

Definitely agree. The notion that they are lying so bare-faced is misguided.

Correct - I don't believe them. I think they will merge the products to some degree and then let what's left of Instagram rot.

The consensus seems to be that FB was more threatened by the prospect of google aquiring instagram than an independent instagram. Still though, that's a pretty penny to spend.

They probably did to protect themselves... instagram was growing like crazy, last thing FB needs is another giant network to share people with.

That's my thought too. Instagram has a plausible claim on all mobile photo sharing, and there's a strain of thought that suggests that 80% of the value of Facebook is photo sharing. Instagram might be a bit too much of a free radical for Facebook to let float around the market.

Or even worse...end up in Google, Apple, MSFT, Amazon, or anyone else's hands.

This was purely defense just like YouTube, and Diapers.com & Zappos for Amazon.

Brilliant move all-around.

In a few years, this price will seem like a steal...much like the $1B that Yahoo proposed for FB a few years ago seems laughable now.

That would mean the likes of pinterest would be next.

Unlike Instagram and Facebook, people on pinterest don't take their own pictures.

Zuck's post gives a few clues.

"We will try to learn from Instagram's experience to build similar features into our other products. At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook's strong engineering team and infrastructure."

Oh, so not tech talent, but talent in developing a loyal and active userbase. That could be worth $1B to FB.

I would say customer base is the strongest point, and that indirectly means technology. Instagram is huge. Now many people's default photo app will automatically upload to facebook, as a google+ instant upload competitor.

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