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Comment by viscanti | Hacker News Reader

I'd be careful extrapolating growth based on a photo filter trend. The big benefit of Instagram is making mediocre camera-phone pictures look "better" by adding filters. As camera-phones improve and tastes change (which is inevitable), Instagram's value could significantly decrease. I think you're underestimating the risk in this acquisition.

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Not to mention that Instagram doesn't seem to have $1B worth of revenue generation potential.

I wish that sometimes companies like these didn't get acquired before they had to start making money for themselves. When everyone is scared that everyone else is going to purchase the "next big thing" first we get these crazy purchase prices. If they'd just been allowed to run up huge server/bandwidth bills, fail to monetize and shutdown it would return some sanity to the world.

I'd love to see some stats comparing instagram to say imgur. I'd be willing to bet that imgur is serving more views, and certainly making more money. Different market, but still.

It wouldnt take much money for Imgur to add an upload/camera app with a few filters though would it? They're a big part of reddit content and appear to have started accreting some of that community too.

Instagram's value-add used to be their filters and quick sharing options, but the genius of Instagram is that they used that to build a community. The Instagram community is worth $1b+ because it's got network effects and it's an inclusive community, meaning that entire networks of friends join Instagram and love it. It's different, in my opinion, than Digg or Flickr because those networks were more narrow-focused and appealed to only the serious passionate users. Instagram is taking young people by storm and reminds me more of FB or Twitter.

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