As if San Francisco's tech elite wasn't already swimming in wealth, it looks like there's a new billion-dollar company in the making. And that'd be none other than our absolute made-in-the-Bay obsession, Instagram.
On the heels of the photo app launching on Android version last week,
The Wall Street Journal
is now announcing that Facebook is set to buy Instagram for $1 billion in cash and stock. Um, yep...you heard that right. The Zuck himself announced the following news on Facebook this morning in a post that has nearly 50,000 "likes."
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"I'm excited to share the news that we've agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook... 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."
Zuckerberg, who is set to become a multi-billionaire himself once Facebook's IPO executes, also goes on to explain that acquiring companies like Instagram won't be something he makes a habit of.
"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," he says. "We don't plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together."
Given that Instagram has shown exponential growth since its launch in October 2010 and it's become our own personal go-to time waster (replacing Twitter!), we'd say this is money well spent on Facebook's part. Congrats to founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, whose Instagram followers should probably brace themselves of a few more Ferrari pictures thrown in here and there.
Photo: Via Instagram/@kevin