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Facebook Buys Instagram for One Billion

What do they have to gain?

The social media website Facebook, if you haven’t heard of it, announced Monday that they plan to buy the photo sharing app. Instagram for a measly $1 billion.

Instagram has 30 million users and is expected to gain a lot more after expanding to Android users recently. In the first 24 hours, 1 million users downloaded the Instagram app. to their Android. The Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom expects that Instagram will reach 100 million users with the new deal.

According to the Associated Press, Instagram only has 10 employees who will all be added to the Facebook team when the papers get signed.

“We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience,” said the founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerburg 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.”

He also added, “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.”

Many people are wondering what Facebook gets out this. The company already has users that upload 100 million photos per day. Much speculation suggests that Facebook will be able to target ad companies, but some are still skeptical as if this is the best way this could have been done for the media giant.

When push comes to shove, though, Instagram is off the market for the Facebook competitors Twitter and Google. If the price tag was worth $1 billion, who knows? We will have to wait and see.

 

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