Skip to footer

Instagram gives Facebook 5 million reasons to love recent acquisition

The new Android app from Instagram, which was recently gobbled up by Facebook, has racked up 5 million downloads. 

|
Reuters
Instagram, seen here on an Android phone, has proved extremely popular among users of the Google mobile platform.
  • By Matthew Shaer

Earlier this week, Facebook announced the acquisition of photo-sharing hub Instagram. The price tag? A reported $1 billion in stock options and cash, a hefty chunk of change even for a company that could soon be valued at $100 billion.

In a message to users, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg maintained that although Facebook and Instagram offered very "different experiences, that the two platforms would "complement each other." 

"This is an important milestone for Facebook because it's the first time we've ever acquired a product and company with so many users," Zuckerberg wrote. "We don't plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. 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." 

Plenty of analysts thought Team Facebook was nuts. (The deal, wrote one, "was an indication that Facebook does not have what it takes to stay in business.") 

But today comes news that Facebook may have been prescient in gobbling up Instagram. According to VentureBeat, the new Instagram Android application tallied up a million downloads in the first 24 hours it was available. And it wasn't just a quick burst of interest, either – over six days, downloads of the Android app topped five million. "Insta-growth," VentureBeat called it. (30 million users already reportedly access Instagram through Apple's iOS.) 

The question now is whether Instagram can continue to thrive under Facebook control, points out Mike Isaac of Wired. 

"Upon any relatively small startup being absorbed by a larger company, there’s almost always change in structure, workflow and even long-term product goals," Isaac writes. "While both Mark Zuckerberg and Burbn CEO Kevin Systrom both promised that Instagram would continue as the standalone brand and product it is now, it’s difficult to imagine that the social giant’s influence won’t affect Instagram’s evolution at all."

For more tech news, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut. And don’t forget to sign up for the weekly BizTech newsletter.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Instagram gives Facebook 5 million reasons to love recent acquisition
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Horizons/2012/0411/Instagram-gives-Facebook-5-million-reasons-to-love-recent-acquisition
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe