i understand the upside of this platform but this appears to be a classic scenario where fb fked itself by paying too much of a premium to acquire instagram and then naturally, the market re-set that acquisition as a precedent premium to apply for subsequent acquisitions. now fb has to set a premium to that premium since their own internal crappy tools like poke and chat aren't working in their favor and they've shown their cards.

if you think about it... something smells fishy. fb was valued at 100bn for fb. now people will realize that it has to make over-priced acquisitions just to stay competitive in its own market that it created, not to propel growth and valuation from when it ipo'd.

chasing deals is what happened to the private equity markets back in '05 - '07 and look what happened. as for snapchat, assuming rev. to be similar to other platforms in its space is a mistake; other platforms are based on "social graphing / data" whereas snapchat is based on "deletion of data." moreover, the expectation that the engagement rates will continue is asinine - easy pickings of core users have already been had and incremental users will only lower engagement, not increase engagement. plus, at some point the fad nature will run its course and fatigue will sink in for many (e.g. groupons to omgpop - who the fk still plays that game).

i hope i'm proven wrong, but i wished the lemming investors and fb was a bit more level-headed instead of putting the entire start-up industry in jeopardy.

thoughts?