[wlesieutre]

I don't have any inside info here, but they could have gotten much more granular information than how many people were using Instagram and WhatsApp.

For instance, daily time spent in using Instagram on a per-user basis, whether that use was associated with a drop in Facebook use, and how patterns in that relationship broke down across demographics.

I didn't think they were no-brainer acquisitions at the time, but they've certainly turned out to be in hindsight. Was Facebook just smart or lucky, or did they have a lot more data than we did to judge those decisions?