WHAT IF FACEBOOK SHUTS DOWN INSTAGRAM?
Image via Facebook
Smarter Upstarter’s no stranger to complaining about the loss of a web 2.0 product he’d grown fond of (see Summify). This time it’s the Mac mail app Sparrow. I get the arguments that I’ve no right to complain, and that these startups don’t owe me anything. But I wonder, wouldn’t people be upset if Facebook shut down Instagram? Millions and millions of users sharing moments from their lives on a network, and the whole thing’s suddenly yanked out from under them. Why isn’t it reasonable for Sparrow’s users to feel this way just because it’s on a smaller scale?
I bring it up again because Harry McCracken wrote a really great article about this over at TIME’s Techland blog. In it he revisits a bunch of Google and Facebook acquisitions and what happened to the companies they bought. Great read, and a reminder that it’s not always like this, look at YouTube. By the way, they have the best office slide on Earth.
