Facebook issued a press release stating that it has agreed to acquire Instagram , a photo-sharing app for mobile devices, for total consideration of “approximately $1 billion”, including cash and shares of Facebook. The transaction is expected to close later this quarter.
“I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.”
Facebook intends to keep and build on Instagram’s strengths and features instead of a straight integration into Facebook.
Facebook’s intent is to let Instagram grow independently of Facebook by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure. They plan to keep the ability to post to other social networks, allow users to not share Instagram photos on Facebook and to follow people or have followers independent from your Facebook friends.
More from Mark Zuckerberg’s Timeline post:
“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.”
Pretty nice deal for Instagram.
