Facebook bought Instagram for 1 billion

Facebook just announced that it is buying Instagram. Mark Zuckerberg posted the announcement on Facebook.

Facebook's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to continue to develop Instagram as a separate brand, allowing it to post to rival networks.

A press release says the transaction is, "approximately $1 billion in a combination of cash and shares of Facebook." The transaction is expected to close later this quarter, the release says.

Instagram was only launched in October 2010 - initially just for the iPhone before being offered as an Android app last week. The app is free and allows users to apply 17 filters to the pictures they take - changing the colour balance to give the images a different feel - before they are uploaded. It has proven hugely popular. The firm says that it has more than 30 million users uploading more than 5 million new pictures every day.

"We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience," Mr Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page.

"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."

Zuckerberg went on to say that the company will be building on Instagram’s strengths and features and growing the app independently rather than “just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.”

Facebook plans on keeping features within the app that allow photos to be published on other social networks, and the ability to have followers and follow people who are not necessarily your Facebook friends.

“We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features into our other products,” Zuckerberg said. “At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure.”

This is the first time Facebook has acquired a company or product with so many users. “We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all.” Zuckerberg said.