Facebook or Insta?


After it was found out that Facebook had corroborated with an analytics company to effectively steal people’s privacy details without permission, thousands of people left Facebook. They were making a point. They were angry. They posted on Twitter, telling everyone who would lessen that they were sticking the middle finger at Mark Zuckerberg’s evil company.

They wouldn’t touch Facebook again, but they would still post photos on Instagram. You would see a healthier side with great photographs without evil companies stealing your rights.

People nodded in agreement. “Screw them! Screw Mark Zuckerberg! Facebook is evil!”, the keyboard warriors chanted in their offices, cars and homes.

Hurrah for Instagram, that independent organisation where there are ONE BILLION users every month up to June 2018, and 500 million active daily users. In terms of photos shared, 50 billion photos (to September 2018) have shared. The number of photos of people’s dogs, adventures and junk is likely to be thrown up there. All the details can loved, remarked on, and saluted.

After it was found out that Facebook had corroborated with an analytics company to effectively steal people’s privacy details without permission, thousands of people left Facebook. They were making a point. They were angry. They posted on Twitter, telling everyone who would lessen that they were sticking the middle finger at Mark Zuckerberg’s evil company.

They wouldn’t touch Facebook again, but they would still post photos on Instagram. You would see a healthier side with great photographs without evil companies stealing your rights.

People nodded in agreement. “Screw them! Screw Mark Zuckerberg! Facebook is evil!”, the keyboard warriors chanted in their offices, cars and homes.

Hurrah for Instagram, that independent organisation where there are ONE BILLION users every month up to June 2018, and 500 million active daily users. In terms of photos shared, 50 billion photos (to September 2018) have shared. The number of photos of people’s dogs, adventures and junk is likely to be thrown up there. All the details can loved, remarked on, and saluted.

All these figures are true.

Apart from the bit where Instagram was independent. It was bought by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion, and it’s probably the best $1 billion, and drove the company’s ad growth during 2018, and it’s only getting stronger.

And despite some short term pain in its share price, Facebook has recovered all of what it lost during the scandal and then some (it went from $185 to $156 in late March 2018 and now it’s at $191, folks).



All these figures are true.

Apart from the bit where Instagram was independent. It was bought by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion, and it’s probably the best $1 billion, and drove the company’s ad growth during 2018, and it’s only getting stronger.

And despite some short term pain in its share price, Facebook has recovered all of what it lost during the scandal and then some (it went from $185 to $156 in late March 2018 and now it’s at $191, folks).

Here's some quick 'owner' knowledge for you:

1. YouTube (everything that you watch video on)  is owned by Google (everything you search on). Google does NOT sell your data to third parties. Instead, it's packaging up your searches and selling them to marketers. So it might seem as though you've sent them to particular marketers, but it hasn't.

2. Facebook also owns Whatsapp. We love it because it's enrypted so we can say what we want to who we want. Google is consistently trying to work out how to make money from it, and it's becoming a head-scratcher.

3. Snapchat and Spotify are both independent (ie haven't been bought yet), although - like Google (as Alphabet) and Facebook - are floated on the stock market.

4. Everything's available on Apple, because Apple.


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