Popular photography and sharing platform Instagram
are reporting that they have been acquired for $1 Billion, in a combination of cash and stock.
This news comes only a few days after the platform was made available to Android users, quickly proving to be a massive success.
As the trend for do-it-yourself photo filtering increased, Instagram became one of the firm favourites and market leaders.
While the nature of the acquisition may not be surprising, the amount of money splashed out by Facebook is slightly alarming.
Instagram appears as nothing more than a fad, and indeed, in the last few weeks, iOS users have been leaving their service in their droves, in protest at the platform’s Android release.
Zuck has pledged to keep Instagram as a seperate entity, and allow multi-network posting, but it will no doubt now be heavily Facebook-orientated.
Writing on his Facebook page, Zuck said: “We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.”
He added: “This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all.”
Whether this will have a positive effect on Instagram users remains to be seen, but it is unlikely that being driven by Facebook will encourage anyone to download Instagram who previously wouldn’t have.
