Acquired 01.02 — Instagram

Acquired on Facebook’s Instagram purchase — 2.2M users per employee at acquisition, 2.6M by 2015. The argument: Instagram taught Facebook how to acquire (which made WhatsApp possible), and without it Facebook’s mobile suite likely never develops. Owning the audience means controlling where attention goes.

Notes

• Acquired with 2.2M users per employee and in 2015 had 2.6M per employee
• You really have to own the audience and control where that attention goes (that would have been the danger of Facebook not owning Instagram)
• You could argue that Instagram taught Facebook how to do acquisitions (e.g. WhatsApp)
• On top of that, it’s arguable that Facebook wouldn’t have developed as strong of a suite of products in mobile without this acquisitions (e.g. Messenger is now a standalone app with 700M users)
• WeChat is an innovative business model of becoming an operating system with value added services