Facebook gets Instagram for key deal

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, in a surprise move, stated Monday that his company had bought Instagram. The effort was meant to drive improved photo sharing beyond what Facebook does today. Unlike the acquisitions of services like Beluga, however, he stressed that Instagram wouldn't be directly absorbed into Facebook's platform. That separation was valuable, he said.

"We're committed to building and growing Instagram independently," Zuckerberg said. "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."

Instagram would still share content out to non-Facebook sites, and it would still be possible to add and share with friends who aren't connected to it, he said.

The deal is believed worth $1 billion, which is one of the biggest deals ever relative to the number of employees. Instagram has typically had less than a dozen employees.

Zuckerberg added that the buyout was a very rare deal for the sheer size of the user base, with over 30 million users even before Instagram's Android version appeared. He even suggested this may be one of the last of its kind for Facebook. "We don't plan on doing many more of these, if any at all," he said.

- Jon Fingas

By Electronista Staff

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iPhone, industry, software, Android, iPhone apps, Facebook, mobile phones, Instagram