- who may well just sell out to Facebook again after a couple of years[1]

[1] No shade - if Facebook offered me $billions for my user generated content site, I'd be at the bank quicker than you could imagine but I wouldn't expect anyone to trust me with user content again.

I don't think there's any love between Zuckerberg and Instagram's founders: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-04-07/zuckerber...

What's interpersonal love got to do with it? Everyone would love 9-10 figure checks.

Let's just hope this doesn't happen...

omeid: Write a poem about futility of hope, hope alone.

ChatGPT3:

  Hope, a beacon of light in the dark,
  A shining star in the depths of despair.
  A promise of better days, a ray of hope,
  A wish for the future, a prayer.
  
  But hope alone is just a fleeting thought,
  A mirage in the desert, a dream.
  It's just a spark, a flicker, a flame,
  A wish for what might have been.
  
  For hope alone cannot change the world,
  It cannot heal a broken heart.
  It cannot cure the sick, or ease the pain,
  Or bring about a brand new start.
  
  Hope alone cannot make the rain fall,
  Or calm the stormy sea.
  It cannot mend the broken bridge,
  Or make the mountains move with ease.
  
  Hope alone is just a feeling,
  A wishful thought, a dreamer's prayer.
  It's just a whisper in the wind,
  A hope that's lost in the air.
  
  So hold on tight to hope, my friend,
  But never let it be your only guide.
  For hope alone is just a fantasy,
  A fleeting dream that can't abide.

it wasnt billions, it was 1 billion

"$1,000,000,000 in 2012 is worth $1,292,703,642.08 today"

Which is more than $1bn and therefore qualifies as "billions".

I can't believe your ego couldn't take that. $109 isn't hundreds of dollars.

and $900,000,000 today will someday be worth over $1B, but we don't call them billions.

Brian Acton who sold Facebook his WhatsApp would like a word.

Ask him why he walked away from his final billion (with a b) dollar payment.

In a long piece by Forbes, Mr Acton refers to himself as “a sellout” despite taking what Forbes journalist Parmy Olson described as “perhaps the most expensive moral stand in history”.

After he became fed up by Facebook’s desire to find a way to squeeze personal ads into WhatsApp, he walked away from the company a year before his final tranche of stock grants vested — a common payment method to reward workers with the ability to cash in shares if they stick around.

But he knew what he was doing. The day he left he took a screenshot of the stock price on his way out the door. The decision to leave cost him about $1.17 billion.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/im-a-sellou...

It cost him $1bn once he was already worth about $3.5bn...

I think a third of one's lifetime earnings would give most people pause.

If those lifetime earnings wouldn't already cover absolutely everything one needs except for money to conquer an entire country with...

Whatever, I'm in. I'm still startup positive. Let's see what they have cooking.

It's easy to be a cynic

I agree that we should try to be more positive. But for every useful startup there are dozens of quibis, juiceros and many others you mostly don't hear about, but would recognize as dead-ends if you paid attention.

So where do you draw the line? When something looks like BS vs. simply unusual/innovative. PG said that most good startup ideas are counterintuitive otherwise they would have been done a long time ago. But there are also a lot of counterintuitive ideas not worth doing.

I'm in finally. This shit is nonsense. It's just the "for you" tab of really awful systems incorrectly guessing and pushing spam on your in a Google news like interface.

Goodbye artifact

Yeah, but it also makes sense to be a cynic, to be honest. We are overloaded with possibilities; there are many more ”amazing, next big thing” apps out there than we could possibly fit in a thousand lives. Plus, in a competition market, the real good things thrive through the criticism. Finally, why would you give a billionaire an easy time? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a socialist, it’s just that there’s really no reason to do it.

Why give anybody hard time? For starting a company, for trying out new things...

also given that they want a phone number i don't trust this not to be mobile-only. which is why i never tried out instagram in the first place.

I can understand not wanting to interact with a certain company, but I don't get the phone number thing. There used to be books that listed everyone's phone number.

Yea but those books just had your name and maybe address. In the current world your number can have your whole life attached, even whether you use a bum gun. It’s not the same

Also you could opt out of having your details in the book.

It removes the ability to interact with the service anonymously. With a phone number, they know exactly who you are, and when your data is sold it’ll be at your expense.

I immediately signed up. AMA.

Link to the app? Can't find it anywhere ?

Also signed up. They can have my phone number. What are they going to do with it? Target advertising at me?

To be honest, I'm a bit past caring about companies selling my data. They've built up enough of a profile of me in my 30+ years of being online, I'm not getting away from that. There's a multitude of my namesakes online who are much more interesting and successful than me and I'm pretty well hidden generally.

This sounds interesting enough to me that they can have my phone number. In 10 years time I'll be living in a forest in a cabin, living off the land and staying well offline.

That's assuming they unified your profile and your interests, politics, and purchase desires remain the same.

I've received terrible targeted ads so either they're good at fooling me they're bad or they're actually bad.

It really seems like the audience is the tech gentry who cheer on Mike and Kevin to conquer a consumer market they all condescend to. The only reason to sign up is to have a savvy opinion about it.

Remember the Facebook News Feed? Remember thinking, "gosh, they added to this without asking us, and I just wish we could have ONLY that! More News Feed, please!" Well, the Instagram Boys have the thing for you!