With the news breaking on Monday that social networking monolith Facebook went over to the San Francisco offices of mega-hot photo sharing app Instagram and dropped off a dump truck full of money, it looks like acquisition fever has come back to Silicon Valley.
Facebook's one billion dollar investment in the 13-person company was seen largely as an effort to bring a fast-growing potential rival into the fold and keep the approximately five million photos uploaded to the service every single day from eating into its page views/advertising dollars.
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News of the acquisition kicked up a major dust storm on Twitter, with legions of previously loyal Instagram users threatening to delete their accounts instead of letting Facebook get its grubby, data-mining paws on their personal information.
While privacy definitely is a concern, some of the complaining smacks of jealousy stemming from Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom's mind-boggling payday. Not to say that Systrom and Co. didn't deserve it (those Instagram filters can make anything look artsy), but a whole bunch of other San Francisco tech startups seem just as ripe for a not-so-hostile takeover.
We've compiled a list of a few of the most exciting ones:
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