Facebook : Instagram :: Google+ : Path

Dear kids: Please don’t be so butt-hurt that Facebook acquired Instagram. No matter how much you love (or loved) the app, it was always going to be acquired.

These days, startups aren’t about creating companies that stick around. They are resumes.

If entrepreneurs are lucky, they’ll sell out at a decent price and join Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft. If not, they move on to those companies anyway, without the fat cash-money and impressive titles.

Why be so freaked out that FB got Instagram (besides the privacy concerns, that is)? Imagine if Google put down a billion on Instagram — Google, which acquires startups and then smothers the life out of them.

Facebook’s acquisition, by the way, will probably kill Path, because Path will probably be acquired by Google. I’m guessing, sure, but still…. how fitting.

The only people who dig Path are friends with people at the Path — and they also happen to be the San Francisco/Silicon Valley bloggers/investors populating outfits like TechCrunch, Crunchfund and PandoDaily.

Try as they might, these bloggers/investors haven’t convinced regular users to stick it out on an app that doesn’t really do anything different from Facebook. Small wonder.

Path, older than Instagram, has 2 million users. Instagram has 30 million. Facebook now owns the mobile photo space. For now, anyway.

Path never had a chance, and never will.

Still, Google — because it is Google and therefore retarded — will react to this purchase, and I think that means shelling out some amount of dinero on Path to force it on Google+.

Which is to say, get a dead app for a dead social network.

Makes sense, in that sad, fucked-up Google way.