> "All/most of that gets extinguished immediately, or, eventually after, an acquisition by Facebook."
We think that because we follow the tech news and are savvy about the consequences of an acquisition. However, I'm not sure (anymore) that it necessarily plays out that way for the general public.
For example, I'm not an Instagram user but I do wonder how many of them are aware that it's now a Facebook property. If I look over their website I don't see anything obviously linking it to Facebook so maybe there's a chance that a proportion of their user-base is still treating it as independent (of course, I'm not aware of the in-app experience).
It reminds me of one of those stories I read about an online game (EVE-Online?) where one guy had cornered the entire market for selling a particular power-up/drug but had a number of completely different avatars 'on the ground' so his customers had no-idea they were buying from the same person.
> We think that because we follow the tech news and are savvy about the consequences of an acquisition. However, I'm not sure (anymore) that it necessarily plays out that way for the general public.
fair point. this is a recurring pattern where there's a kind of profitable arbitrage that occurs between high/early-info groups and low/later-info groups (eg. between Wall Street types and mom-and-pop on Main Street.) This certainly could be partly due to that effect again.
We think that because we follow the tech news and are savvy about the consequences of an acquisition. However, I'm not sure (anymore) that it necessarily plays out that way for the general public.
For example, I'm not an Instagram user but I do wonder how many of them are aware that it's now a Facebook property. If I look over their website I don't see anything obviously linking it to Facebook so maybe there's a chance that a proportion of their user-base is still treating it as independent (of course, I'm not aware of the in-app experience).
It reminds me of one of those stories I read about an online game (EVE-Online?) where one guy had cornered the entire market for selling a particular power-up/drug but had a number of completely different avatars 'on the ground' so his customers had no-idea they were buying from the same person.