Facebook Acquires Instagram for $1 Billion

Facebook has acquired the photo-sharing site Instagram for a reported $1 billion in cash and stock. "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," wrote founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a statement on his Facebook page. Instagram recently gained more than a million downloads in one day when it released an Android version of its photo effects and sharing app. Previously valued at $500 million, the company was set to raise $50 million in a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital just days before this announcement was released. The product is actually a nice fit for America's largest social network, which is already benefiting from the photo-enhancing technology that Instagram users love when they're taking pictures of their friends and family members to share online. Read more from the founder below: I'm excited to share the news that we've agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook. 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. We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. 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. These and many other features are important parts of the Instagram experience and we understand that. We will try to learn from Instagram's experience to build similar features into our other products. At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook's strong engineering team and infrastructure. 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. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together. We're looking forward to working with the Instagram team and to all of the great new experiences we're going to be able to build together.

Social Pro Daily

Facebook Acquires Instagram for $1 Billion

Devon Glenn

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Devon Glenn