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Facebook Buys Instagram for $1 Billion

<address class="byline author vcard">By EVELYN M. RUSLI</address>

Pool photo by Yuriko NakaoMark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, which is expected to go public next month.
Facebook is not waiting for its initial public offering to make its first big purchase.
The social network has acquired Instagram, the popular photo-sharing application, for about $1 billion in cash and stock, the company said Monday. In a Facebook post on a profile page, the company’s chief, Mark Zuckerberg, said he planned to build Instagram independently from the social network. The move will allow users to post on other social networks, follow users not on Facebook, and to opt out of sharing on Facebook.
“For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote. “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.”

Here is the news release from Facebook:[INDENT]Facebook announced today that it has reached an agreement to acquire Instagram, a fun, popular photo-sharing app for mobile devices.
The total consideration for San Francisco-based Instagram is approximately $1 billion in a combination of cash and shares of Facebook. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close later this quarter.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, posted about the transaction on his Timeline:
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.

[/INDENT]

sleeper

Overpaid.

gorocks99

Cue something about facebook changes being ridiculous and how everyone will leave, followed by everyone staying.

dlazz

Agreed with sleeper. Overpaid.

Instagram is stupid.

Laley23

Maybe people will stop using it, and we can return to 2012 and leave the 1950s back in the past.

I hate Instagram.

derek bomar

that's a lot of fucking money for something that makes your pictures weird looking.

sleeper

Facebook buying Twitter would make way more sense than buying Instagram. It'll be interesting to see who does end up buying Twitter, but I think either Google, Microsoft, or Facebook ends up with them.

GOONx19

Magic Johnson will buy it for $2 billion.

sleeper

GOONx19;1140163 wrote:Magic Johnson will buy it for $2 billion.

reps.

hoops23

sleeper;1140151 wrote:Facebook buying Twitter would make way more sense than buying Instagram. It'll be interesting to see who does end up buying Twitter, but I think either Google, Microsoft, or Facebook ends up with them.

Given twitters recent integration with apple, I assume apple would buy them.

sleeper

hoops23;1140223 wrote:Given twitters recent integration with apple, I assume apple would buy them.

No chance.

hoops23

sleeper;1140224 wrote:No chance.

Yeah, you're right. Apple doesn't have the funds LMAO

sleeper

hoops23;1140226 wrote:Yeah, you're right. Apple doesn't have the funds LMAO

Apple has the funds, no doubt. Apple has the funds to buy ConAgra foods if they wanted, but Apple has no business or interest in getting involved in social networking.

hoops23

sleeper;1140227 wrote:Apple has the funds, no doubt. Apple has the funds to buy ConAgra foods if they wanted, but Apple has no business or interest in getting involved in social networking.

This is likely true, unless they were forced to due to the integration and losing it to a competitor.

sleeper

hoops23;1140228 wrote:This is likely true, unless they were forced to due to the integration and losing it to a competitor.

Whoever ends up buying Twitter, they won't restrict it from being used on Apple devices. That would be a pointless move. I would put Google as the #1 potential buyer whenever they decide to give up on Google+. Or they could keep Google+ and use Twitter strictly for "real-time search", which I think aligns well with their advertising business(ie. Tupac is trending and when you search you see Tweets as well as a link to buy a Tupac album). I could see Microsoft trying to get involved in things it has no business getting involved in(search with Bing for example). Facebook would buy it, but only to shut it down and transition FB into a more Twitter like service with trends and hashtags etc.

I'd still put all the money on Google buying it one day.

Glory Days

the fuck is instagram?

Pick6

Glory Days;1140469 wrote:the fuck is instagram?

I'm guessing you are old.

krambman

sleeper;1140151 wrote:Facebook buying Twitter would make way more sense than buying Instagram. It'll be interesting to see who does end up buying Twitter, but I think either Google, Microsoft, or Facebook ends up with them.

Hopefully someone like Google buys Twitter. Right now Twitter is insufficiently supported and advances too slowly for the number of users. There are a lot of obvious improvements that could be made very rapidly if someone with deep pockets purchased Twitter.

gerb131

Suckerberg.
Instagram is not useful to me and facebook is heading down that avenue as well.

hoops23

Google would likely kill Twitter. Their track record with social media is not good. At all.

Pick6

krambman;1140579 wrote:Hopefully someone like Google buys Twitter. Right now Twitter is insufficiently supported and advances too slowly for the number of users. There are a lot of obvious improvements that could be made very rapidly if someone with deep pockets purchased Twitter.

no reason to fix something if it isnt broke.

hoops23

I'm more than ok with how Twitter is currently constructed. It is what it is. When you try to do too much with a simple concept it could have negative results.

FaceBook fucking sucks.

derek bomar

Twitter > Facebook

Laley23

derek bomar;1140643 wrote:Twitter > Facebook

Twitter =/= FaceBook.

The two simply cannot be compared. They are completely different forms of Social Media.

Classyposter58

I recently deleted my facebook. I think twitter is far more beneficial and hasn't been destroyed by high schoolers and people trying to hook up online

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