It‘s Facebook’s biggest acquisition ever, in both price and reach. Zuckerberg wrote in his blog post, “We don‘t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all”. He then added, “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.”
Instagram has around 30 million users founded in 2010 by Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom, which lets users add distinctive filters and visual flair to photos they’ve snapped on their smartphones.The long-awaited Android version, released last week, racked up more than 1 million downloads in just 12 hours.
Just one month ago, Instagram‘s creators claimed they had no interest in selling. “We’re pretty focused on remaining an independent company right now,” Instagram cofounder Systrom told CNNMoney at South by Southwest, where the company delivered a talk on its wild growth.
After the company‘s announcement Monday, Instragram’s founders wrote on their company blog “It‘s important to be clear that Instagram is not going away. We’ll continue to add new features to the product and find new ways to create a better mobile photos experience.”
Zuckerberg pressed the point. “We‘re committed to building and growing Instagram independently,” the CEO said. “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.”
Instagram is a free app and doesn’t charge for any of its services. The company‘s founders insisted that would come in time, once they’d built a sizeable user base.
(아주경제 앤드류 이 기자)
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com