Behind the Instagram takeover: The triumph of Mobile Internet

Picture social sharing platform Instagram (Sina Science and Technology map) Sina Technology Zheng from the US Silicon Valley Facebook announced in Monday to spend $1 billion to buy the photo-sharing platform Instagram in the form of shares plus cash.　　The news quickly became the biggest focus of Silicon Valley, and the deal was of unusual significance for Instagram itself, the Silicon Valley start-up Circle and Facebook. For start-up company Instagram, this is the success of the photo agency, where convenience, cross-platform and social networking are the three key elements of their successes; for the entrepreneurial sector, this is the triumph of the mobile internet, which allows startups to reach tens of millions of or even billions of users, and a team of more than 10 people can achieve a 1 billion dollar valuation　　, for Facebook, the deal could be seen as an active defense that could defuse a potential threat and improve its weakest picture-sharing experience. 13 employees and $1 billion Instagram are typical Silicon Valley entrepreneurial success stories, if San Francisco is included in the broader Silicon Valley concept. The two young Kevin Strom (Kevin systrom) and Mack Cregg (Mike Krieger) want to transfer their HTML5 elements burbn element to mobile picture sharing, creating a new start-up company Instagram in San Francisco.　　With Instagram applications, users can use built-in filters for artistic processing, and then share them with the Instagram image community, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook. October 6, 2010, Instagram landed Apple app Store, the end of the year to get 1 million users. Like other successful products in the social sphere, Instagram's success also carries the Matthew effect: June 2011 users exceeded 5 million, September to 10 million, the latest registered user data is 30 million.　　Along with the user volume crazy growth also has the picture data: Last July picture upload volume reached 100 million mark, only 1 months later broke through 150 million. At the end of last year, Instagram was named "2011 iphone Best Application" by Apple. After success, Instagram began to expand. Last month, Instagram's share options quietly added to China's Sina Weibo, the first time they expanded in overseas markets.　　And last week, Instagram announced the launch of the Android version, into the current smartphone sector's largest share of the Google (microblogging) camp. Instagram's valuation also soared as the product succeeded. Last year's first round of financing, Instagram raised 7 million of dollars, when only 1.75 million people, and last week media reported that InstagramIt will complete the 50 million-dollar round of financing, with the company valued at $500 million. Sequoia Capital has invested in this round of financing. It is worth mentioning that when the Facebook acquisition, Instagram's entrepreneurial team only 13 people.　　This is the first ever company to have valued 1 billion dollars and less than 20 employees. The success of convenience, Cross-platform and social Instagram first coincides with the rise of smartphones. Users use smartphones to record their lives, share footprints and feel social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, and photos are clearly among the most attractive elements. The iphone has replaced traditional photos as the biggest source of photos on Flickr, with the rapid popularity of smartphones and the dramatic rise in camera capabilities, according to data.　　And Instagram's convenient photo sharing provides the greatest experience for this requirement. Cross-platform communities are the second biggest cause of Instagram success. Users have more sharing options on Instagram than a single Twitter, Facebook or Sina Weibo built-in photo sharing feature. Users want their own photos to be shared on Twitter, Facebook or Flickr, so Instagram's multi-platform sharing features save tedious operations for users of different social platforms.　　A Facebook image management application developer, who declined to be named, told Sina Science and technology that "Instagram's success lies in easy early-stage photo processing and later sharing of diversity." Social function is the third major factor in Instagram success. Image processing is not the exclusive killer of Instagram, now most of the camera applications have added built-in filter function, camera+ and other applications even add professional SLR features, while Apple iphoto and Adobe PS Express offers a more diverse picture processing options.　　The Instagram image community provides users with a social platform based on pictures, users can enjoy the "popular" function of other people's masterpiece, comments on their friends pictures, but also through the pictures to pay attention to friends to achieve social networking. Mobile Internet change entrepreneurship combined with another recent deal, it may be better to appreciate the new trends in the recent mobile internet. At the end of last month, Zynga, a social-gaming developer, bought a recent hot draw something developer Omgpop with a value of close to 200 million dollars.　　Draw something domestic or translated as "Guess painting", launched just 7 weeks time to download the amount of breakthrough 50 million times, is the fastest download volume of applications. A two-year company, Instagram, can be valued at $1 billion trillion, or even over a century-old "New York Times" (currently at $946 million trillion); a less than two-month application drawSomething, the download can reach 50 million times, before the mobile internet era, these data are unimaginable. Steve Blank, author of the History of Silicon Valley, said in an interview with Sina Science and technology that the mobile Internet has revolutionized entrepreneurship and that smartphones have become a major Internet device in the world at an alarming rate, making it an unprecedented opportunity for Steve based on mobile internet,　　Their products can reach tens of millions of or even billions of users in a very short time. Several developers, a product, tens of millions of users, hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars valuation, this is the mobile internet era of entrepreneurial highlights. The lack of a revenue model, or the uncertainty of the future, will not deter investor enthusiasm, and traditional valuation metrics seem to have failed to measure the current mobile-internet start-up companies.　　"The user base and user stickiness are the most critical metrics," said Mike McCue, founder of Social magazine application Flipboard Mcmachue. Does the bubble exist? "Bubbles are good," said Mr Blank, "a company that used to be on the market (dotcom bubbles) was a fraud;　　Mcmachue is more optimistic, "mobile internet is a new thing, perhaps how the revenue also need time to develop, as long as a good user experience to maintain a large number of users, at this stage does not need to worry too much about the revenue problem." Facebook's active defense takeover, Instagram, is the largest Facebook deal to date, and it is the first time they will be listed to acquire a mature start-up, and the world's biggest social networking site has far-reaching implications. Facebook currently has more than 800 million users worldwide, and the acquisition of Instagram is clearly not for the latter's 30 million user base. Attracting talent through acquisitions is clearly not a deal.　　Facebook's acquisition of Instagram is more of an active defense, through acquisitions to defuse potential threats and improve its own user experience. Social Media Insider, a blogger who focuses on social media, reviews the deal: "Facebook is not trying to buy opportunities, they just want to take down rival Instagram, the biggest threat to Facebook's image." "Instagram is Facebook's Nicolas Cassen competitor, which simplifies the user's social sharing," Nicholas Carlson, an American technology blogger, said in early February. And Facebook's own picture-sharing feature is a lot more cumbersome than it is to know that easy sharing is the main reason why Facebook emerged from the social networking site's melee. "Picture sharing is clearly the hottest social area in the world, and in addition to the success of Instagram, the rise of another PinterestMore rapidly, the company, founded in 2009, has become the third-largest social networking site in the United States, surpassing the traditional social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Google + and Tumblr, after Facebook and Twitter in March.　　Compared to Facebook's social relationships with people, image-based socializing is more permeable, and Instagram and Pinterest can develop their users beyond the traditional Facebook and Twitter lines. "We're not going to do more of these deals in the future, but the best picture sharing experience is why so many people love Facebook, so it's important that Facebook buys Instagram," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder.　　He also promised that Instagram would work independently, and Facebook would help the app get more users. According to Forbes magazine, Facebook's acquisition of Instagram may be the beginning of the integration of traditional social and functional social networking sites. On the one hand Instagram growing picture communities can expand Facebook's social landscape, on the other hand Instagram will help Facebook improve its image-sharing capabilities.