It is official, Instagram has been acquired by the social networking giants Facebook for whooping $1 Billion (€763 million) on the 10th April 2012.
So who and what is Instagram?
In October 2010, Stanford University graduates Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launched a new iPhone application, Instagram.
Instagram is pretty simple: Snap a photo on your iPhone or Android, add a quirky filter, you can also include a caption and location and share it across Instagram’s internal network or Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Foursquare.
Why Buy Instagram?
The big reason seems to be for the mobile market, and mobile content. Facebook’s brings in some incredible revenue figures from its website, but currently no revenue streams from its mobile market.
And considering Instagram was downloaded over 1 million times on the Android platform once released, this shows the size of mobile
market Facebook can tap into. It also allows Facebook to dramatically increase their photo content and promote users who would normally may not already post to Facebook. This content is also very valuable, it creates a customer profile or portfolio of interest.
While revenue development from mobile photo sharing is new and quite small in relation to Facebook’s overall standings, even if it only amounts to $500 million per quarter, that is another $2 billion per year to add to the bottom line of the books.
So Instagram may not have been able to go head to head against Facebook, but it was surely giving them run for their popularity on the most important platform of all, Mobile.
