Facebook Buys Instagram For $1 Billion

instagramFacebook has announced it is buying the extremely popular photography app-maker Instagram for a reported $1 billion.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the acquisition in a blog post today:

For years, we've focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we'll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.

We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram's strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.

That's why we're committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.

Apple named Instagram its iPhone App of the Year for 2011. Instagram is also the 19th most downloaded free iPhone app of all-time. Instagram launched an Android app just last week.

Instagram is a free download on the App Store. [Direct Link]

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Top Rated Comments

dubprocess Avatar
180 months ago
i cannot blame instagram..if someone showed me 1 billion dollars right in front of my face..i would sell out so quick ..
Score: 97 Votes (Like | Disagree)
jasonxneo Avatar
180 months ago
wow! I might not use instagram anymore! The only reason i used instagram was to get away from the madness of facebook! :D

Score: 81 Votes (Like | Disagree)
BJB Productions Avatar
180 months ago
Sweet. Next release will include 18 new bugs and 2 new features that might work! :rolleyes:
Score: 75 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sbrhwkp3 Avatar
180 months ago
Big deal. Instagram is pointless anyways. "Here, have a look at this photo of my desk that I've filtered to make it look vintage!" Dumb.
Score: 59 Votes (Like | Disagree)
apollo1444 Avatar
180 months ago
And that's why I'm never going to use it anymore...

you're such a hipster...
Score: 46 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Drew n macs Avatar
180 months ago
How about just working on A good facebook app?
Score: 42 Votes (Like | Disagree)