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Mark Zuckerburg just announced that Facebook has agreed to buy the mega-popular photo sharing service Instagram for $1 billion. Facebook’s been on a buying tear of late, and has been beefing up its own already-ubiquitous photo sharing service lately as well.
We’ll fill you in on the details as we know more, but for now, here’s the full announcement from his FB page:
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.
[Facebook via Business Insider]
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the big question is how facebook are going to monetize instagram. obvious answers are making it paid again with an ad-laden free version and in-app purchases like filters
Another big question is how the elitist IOS snobs who make up a fair portion of instagram’s users and who have been whining about the influx of Android users are going to react to the millions of Facebook users that will be joining them soon.
judging by what i’ve already seen, horribly
The elitist thing about apple users is not in the mind of apple users but a perception that others often have.
What’s good for one is good for all!
No…. for once they’re right; people (mainly on twitter from what I can see) are being elitist tossers.
Please understand Taf I am not calling all iOS users elitist, so there is no need for the kneejerk response. I am referring to a sizeable group of instagram users who have made pointless, arrogant, fanboy comments about the arrival of Android users into what they considered their little private club. While I doubt you are one of these people the fact you appear to be defending them makes me think less of you.
When I read your comment I did not think you were referring to just people who used instagram on iOS devices but Apple users in general considering themselves to be elitest snobs.. .
A tbh I haven’t looked into comments on twitter… Any individual who thinks that way is just an idiot! The more people who use a good application can only be a good thing to happen!
That’s why apple should license iOS to Samsung… Or we should all get to choose or mobile OS to download after buying phone. User choice can only a good thing, be it OS or Application on OS!
That’s exactly what I discussed with a people, you buy the handset then choose the OS you want
I still fail to see what is so great about instagram. Does anyone want to try an explain it to me?
it’s a walled social network. it’s not just an app, you have followers and can follow people. you can share instagram photos pretty much everywhere but can only view the feed and profiles on mobiles. by instagram having its own network and user base, facebook have just bought millions of potential paying customers.
as far as photography apps go it’s not great, since it just has filters, a weird optimisation tool and some blur effects, but it’s primarily a social networking application. if you have twitter or facebook and a lot of followers/friends it’s worth getting
Ah right, so it’s nothing fantastic. I’ve already got Facebook for social networking, and flickr for my photographs. I think I’ll give it a miss. Thanks for explaining it though.
Agh! No! Why? This is terrible!
So, another reason to hate Facebook. Now my News Feed will have automatically be filled with stupid vintage pictures of sausage rolls from Greggs. I think I may have to finally make the full move to Twitter.
I just don’t understand most people’s love of Instagram. There is no talent in putting a preset filter on a photograph – it just looks tacky. If they are well Photoshopped however, using custom filters, then there is talent behind that, as Photoshop does take skill to master.
But, at least this may kill off the few remaining Picnik images.
it’s not about talent! normal people like me don’t want to have to slave over an image for any longer than 1 minute to make it look better than it did before. it adds just a nice, simple vintage effect. that’s why it’s so successful, because it’s simple.
but… these hipster features only make the photo worse! It would be much easier for the user and a much better upload, if you just sent it straight from the camera!
millions of people disagree
Actually, millions of people also agree with Crunchy. What’s so different or hipster about Instagram anyway? Because surely, if millions of people are using the same app, then that isn’t being different. That’s following the crowd.
Vintage isn’t nice. Well, real vintage is. If you actually use film, it is fine to scan the film in to your computer, but if you don’t, what’s the point? And that’s why I don’t like it, because it isn’t about talent. I’d like all these effects if I knew people had taken time to add them, but they haven’t, and that ruins things for those who do take time to edit their photos.
Also, it’s what people use these effects for. Most of the time I just see Instagram being used for pictures of food, and really, who needs to be reminded of what a bacon butty looks like? Even if it is ‘vintage’.
again, millions of people don’t care about your points. as i said, it’s not about talent, and i have to disagree about your bacon bitty point because some fantastic shots of food get posted on my feed, especially since i’m friends with an art director for a food blog…
if i really want to take time to edit my photos i’ll use snapseed. if i want to share photos quickly and make them look slightly nicer, i’ll use instagram. i don’t see the problem. but as it grows in popularity, it’s inevitable that people who don’t use it will hate it
i probably come across on here as if i WORK for instagram the amount i defend it, but as somebody who uses it everyday i get the idea that people who don’t use it are missing the point. it’s not for photo editing, it’s for sharing and networking, but with minor, decent looking filters to differentiate itself from regular photos and establish itself as almost a brand. so you’ll look at a photo and think “oh, taken with instagram”.