Instagram vs. The New York Times [Infographic]

We often talk about how fast technology is evolving, and how that affects our daily lives in almost every way. However, I never thought about it all from this perspective before today. We all know that Mark Zuckerberg thought the value of Instagram was worth $1 billion dollars, and the decision that Facebook made to purchase the popular photo sharing site really raised a lot of questions about how we value companies today.

This infographic, called Instagram vs. The New York Times (created by the visual.ly team), really brings up a good point. Instagram was a 2-year-old startup with 12 employees at the time it was valued at a billion dollars.

On the same day that Facebook purchased Instagram, The New York Times, which is one of the most respected companies in the world and one that has been around for 161 years, was valued at 946 million dollars. How could The New York Times be valued at less than Instagram? Is it simply just that the market value and the perceived value are different? There is no question that some startups have become more valuable than big brands very quickly, but even the really, really big brands?

So the question I have is, how exactly are we valuing companies these days? Can a hot shot startup body slam a traditional big brand if it has enough influence in social media? Is that how it works now? Is it the social media aspect that is the key? Or, have we learned from the Facebook IPO (which is really too new to base anything on yet) that perhaps these companies are a little overvalued? Apparently in the eyes of investors, tech startups can be very valuable. What do you think of all this?