Published: April 9, 2012
Facebook has reached today an agreement to buy Instagram and hire its team of workers. The price considered in the transaction, expected to be closed later this quarter, is approximately one billion dollars.
For those who aren't familiarized with Instagram, this app is basically a tool by which users can take photos, apply a filter to them, and then share those images in multiple social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and many others. The filters are predefined processes by which the looks of the photos are changed, automatically setting aspects such as its color or texture. With Instagram's filters users can, for example, make a photo look as if it was taken by a Polaroid camera.
In a post on his Facebook Timeline, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of the social network, referred to the transaction stating that the app Instagram will keep its brand and independence from Facebook. In his own words, "[w]e 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."
This is the first time Facebook makes an acquisition of a company having a big quantity of users, and as stated by Zuckerberg in his message, they are not planning to do many more of these, if any at all.
By Rom Cartridge. Image courtesy of Andy Roberts via Flickr.
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