Facebook buys photo-sharing app Instagram for $1bn

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has today announced that the social network giant has agreed to aquire the popular photo-sharing app Instagram, and its creators for a staggering $1bn (£629m).

Zuckerburg broke the news in a blog post:

“I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.

For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.

We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.

That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. 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.”

Launched in 2010, and exclusive to the iPhone until the release of an Android version just last week, Instagram has over 30 million users, and was named by Apple as their iPhone App of the year for 2011.

If you haven’t already tried it, Instagram is free to download from the App Store.