It's easy when you have admin access to Facebook profiles.
The Facebook deal was only announced today. It will close in a month. That month will be partially consumed with due diligence.
Are they not still a private firm? Who is the due diligence owed to? I'm sure they've been watching this and mulling it over for quite some time and that the folks in charge approve. That's all they need to do.
> Who is the due diligence owed to?
Um...themselves?? You don't spend a billion without doing due diligence for yourself.
Exactly. The fact that the shareholders are private rather than public makes no difference -- it's still a billion dollars.
Unless Zuckerberg used his credit card. With that kind of expense he must be trying to get to the ISS on mileage. ;-)
Now, more seriously, Instagram's size makes due diligence a lot easier.
facebook may have been thinking about this for months.
The fact that they had already gone through due diligence to get the 50MM funding probably helped. In any case, this is very straightforward, as long as the metrics were real, that is basically what they cared about the most.