Emily Bartelheim
News Editor
On Monday, April 9, Facebook announced that it will purchase the enormously popular Instagram application for approximately $1 billion. The deal is Facebook’s largest acquisition to date.
Instagram recently took off in popularity. The app conveniently turns photos individuals take on their phone to look like they were taken in the 70s with a Polaroid camera, adding different filters and color schemes. It was originally an iPhone-only app, but has recently been released for the Android operating system, sparking around 5 million downloads in just six days.
With its new ownership, Instagram will undergo a few changes. First off, get ready for your Newsfeed to be covered in vintage-inspired, “artsy” snapshots. Additionally, there have been complaints of bugs in Facebook’s mobile photo-sharing capabilities, but this sharing of photos through mobile devices will be smoothed over in order to better the “Facebook experience.”
Facebook says it will keep Instagram running independently, but it will also be able to be used on rival social networks such as Twitter (dnj.com). “We believe these are different experiences that complement each other,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a statement. “But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook” (dnj.com).