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Facebook Buys Instagram For $1 Billion

Who the hell blows a billion dollars on something like this?

It's just a flavor of the week for hipsters to take photos of their meals and make them look like some sort of attempt at photography art.

Of course now Facebook will be even more jammed up with photos of stuff no one else cares about.
 
VulchR said:
Yep yep. Makes me wonder what they're smoking at FB to offer that amount.... Seriously, couldn't FB come up with a service that could out-compete Instagram?
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The major question was how instagram could monetize their site. Now they don't have to lol

500 mill valuation few weeks ago, FB paid 1 billion. Thats like going into Best Buy and being told an ipad is 600 bucks and paying 1200 lol
 
Facebook knew it would make front page news by snatching up Instagram. They also knew that buying it for a billion dollars would intrigue millions to try it.
 
sbrhwkp3 said:
Big deal. Instagram is pointless anyways. "Here, have a look at this photo of my desk that I've filtered to make it look vintage!" Dumb.
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Yeah, just like a painting of an unattractive girl with no eyebrows is dumb. :rolleyes:

Art is art. You're apparently not the artsy type.
 
HishamAkhtar said:
For now. No one spends a billion dollars just to keep the app separate forever
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Really, and it's not going to be "completely" separate anyway. All that means is that Facebook currently plans to keep the business as a separate unit and the software as something that won't be integrated into Facebook directly. But otherwise it's going to be as separate as YouTube is from Google, which is to say less and less.

So, for now you can post Instagram to twitter and elsewhere, but at some point I'm pretty sure that will get shut down, or at least you'll have to post through Facebook somehow.
 
I really wish I understood economics.... how on earth will Facebook ever recoup $1b as a result of this acquisition?!

They don't have tech that FB couldn't develop for less than that. It just blows my mind.

Someone please enlighten me?!!! (genuinely asking here...)
 
How can a free app be worth a billion dollars? It seems a little outrageous.

I have a feeling that this will pay off about as much as Robert Murdoch's $580 million MySpace purchase. Time will tell.

On a side note, lets hope that billion dollars will spur the creator of Instagram to go and build yet another awesome free app for us all to enjoy,. Maybe some good will come out of this.
 
"What you talkin' bout Willis"

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First off, it wasn't a Billion Dollars

It's makes for a good story, but I'll bet you there wasn't much cash involved. What they got was mostly Facebook stock valued at some crazy number and likely can't be cashed in anytime soon.
 
ActionJax said:
To the people stating that Instagram is just a way to apply overused filters to mundane photographs: Well, in the hands of boring people, that's what it is.

But to many others, it's a way to share photos and view photo streams from other people that you find interesting. There's a well-constructed social aspect that's missing from other photo filter apps. And for every lame filtered photo of a rusty fire hydrant there are ten truly interesting or beautiful photos. I use Camera+ to tastefully augment my photos then I share them on Instagram, and I have a lot of fun doing it.

I'm not thrilled with today's news but it'll be interesting to see what Facebook does with it.
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THIS. I've just been using Instagram for a couple of weeks and I find (found) it refreshingly different, easy, and inspiring.


TheSuperSteve said:
I never really liked Instagram. I don't understand why people think applying some ghastly filter to their photos turns them into photographers. God forbid anyone actually does a little research into actual photography techniques. Even simple ones such as the rule of thirds is doable on iPhones with the grid on the camera app.

Reminds me of people who buy really expensive professional DSLR cameras to just take some family vacation photos that end up not looking any better than a snapshot using an iPod touch.
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Isn't it the exact opposite in many cases? I'd love to be able to lug around a medium format Hasselblad, or even a Holga, and shoot whatever interests me. Problem is the money I'd spend on film processing and darkroom rentals. But you can turn a print into a sepia using Photoshop or most other photo editing software, so really, whats the difference? Research into photographic techniques is not necessary for me, I've been a professional photographer for 15 years. I don't think adding a digital filter makes me a better photographer, but it's okay to be different every now and then. This is the direction that photography is headed. I can carry a point and shoot, or even an iPhone, and still be creative. I don't need to carry my Nikon D3 everywhere I go. Instagram gave me a brand new creative outlet. It's entertainment.

Anwyay, I'm not happy about Facebook acquiring Instagram. I can see them totally messing up the simple app with tons of "features" and integrating every photo I take with web tracking to send me the perfect advertising for me. When that happens I'll probably lose interest in using it altogether.
 
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.
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screw open graph.... Deleting...
 
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