That’s a big news coming out, the biggest social networking site Facebook is buying out Instagram, the most popular photo sharing application, for $1 billion in cash and Facebook stocks. The news of acquisition was confirmed by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on his Facebook timeline post. The sale is expected to close later this quarter, and the Instagram talented team will now work for the social network.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said “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.
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.”
Facebook will integrate the features of Instagram to its exiting product and will continue to develop on the iOS and Android app with the help of their developers. They also plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks( Twitter, Foursquare,Flicker etc), the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook , and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.
Zuckerberg also said “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.”
What do you think about the Facebook acquisition of Instagram. Does Google plus photo editing features made an effect on this decision? Do comment your views