Facebook to pay US$1bn for Instagram

Photo editing and sharing app Instagram has been purchased by Facebook for US$1 billion in cash and shares, but company CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he’s more interested in learning how the app became so popular than using it as an advantage over other social networks.

In a Facebook post, Zuckerberg says he will incorporate Instagram’s staff into the Facebook team, in order to build on the app’s strengths and features ‘rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook’.

"We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability not to share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook,” Zuckerberg says.

"We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features into our other products.”

First launched in the Apple app store in October 2010, Instagram had grown to over 30 million users as of last week, when it made its debut on the Android platform.

Zuckerberg says he’s not planning many more similar purchases, ‘if any at all’, but with photo sharing such a big part of Facebook’s offering ‘we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together’.

Do you think the Facebook team will be able to resist tinkering with Instagram? Will you stick with the app, or was the indie background part of the appeal? Post your comments below.