Mark Zuckerburg buys Instagram for $1 billion

Mark Zuckerburg and his company Facebook, in its largest acquisition to date, has purchased Instagram, the popular photo-sharing application, for about $1 billion in cash and stock, the company reported on Monday. This is a notable initiative for Facebook, which has exclusively focused on bite-size acquisitions, worth less than $100 million. With the Instagram application, Facebook will get a formidable mobile player, which is an area seen as the social network’s weak spot. Instagram was founded two years ago and the service allows users to share photos and apply stylized filters. The service has become one of the most downloaded applications on the iPhone, with about 30 million users. Last week, Instagram released a version of its application for Google’s Android operating system.

In a post on Mark Zuckerburg’s Facebook page, he said Instagram would continue to work alongside rival social networks, which will allow users to post on other services, follow users outside Facebook, and to opt out of sharing on Facebook. In a news release statement posted on Facebook on Monday, Zuckerburg wrote, “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.” Kevin Systrom, chief executive of Instagram, said he looked forward to leveraging the new parent company’s resources and talent.