Facebook buys Instagram
Monday news!!
Facebook to Buy Photo-Sharing Service Instagram for $1 Billion.
From the NYTimes blog:
Instagram is a social network built around cellphone photos. It lets people add quirky filters and effects to their snapshots and share them with friends, who can ‘like’ and comment on them. The service has been something of a rising star in the start-up world.
Rebecca Lieb, an analyst at the Altimeter Group, described the Instagram acquisition as central to one of Facebook’s most urgent needs: how to make its service more appealing on smartphones.
As more and more people log onto Facebook using mobile devices, Facebook is faced with the challenge of figuring out new ways to make money from the small screens. “We really don’t know how Facebook will monetize mobile platforms,” Ms. Lieb said. “The first step is to make Facebook friendlier on mobile devices, and this will certainly do that.”
So how will it impact us, regular FB users?
That, we have to wait and see. :)
(image from betakit)
