When it comes to mobile photo marketing, Facebook apparently prefers to buy instead of developing. Zuckerberg’s network just revealed its largest acquisition so far as it bought the widespread photo-sharing application Instagram for a dizzying $1 billion amount in cash and stock.
It turned out to be a striking decission from Facebook which ,until now, chanelled its investments on lower valuable acquisitions, usually worth under $100 million.
Instagram photosharing app aims at being Facebook’s mobile player – which was a weak point for dominating social network. Instagram came to life in 2010 and its service helps folks share photos and apply custom filters. Meanwhile it turned into one of iPhone’s most downloaded app, with about 29 million registered users. Instagram did not stop here as it developed for Google Android OS a version of its mobile photosharing app which was released just… last week.
Mark Zuckerberg claimed that Instagram will remain independent and therefore able to work with rival social networks. Instagram independence will grant users to possibility to post on other services, follow people outside Facebook’s range and opt out of sharing on Facebook.
Amazing side? San Francisco-based Instagram has just 13 employees who actually heared about Facebook deal from company’s co-founder Kevin Systrom during a meeting on Monday (9 April 2012).
Instagram-Facebook deal is expected to be finalized later this quarter. Instagram, which is believed to almost reach a new funding amount that would make the startup worth $500 million, had turned previously down an offer from Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and chief executive of Facebook, wrote on his Facebook page a statement about FB-Instagram transaction:
“I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.
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“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.”