Facebook to Acquire Photo-Sharing Start-Up Instagram for $1 Billion

Facebook has just announced that it will acquire Instagram, the popular mobile photo-sharing service, for $1 billion in cash and shares. The social networking giant posted on the acquisition, its biggest yet, on its site, as well as on CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Timeline on Facebook.

Photos are critically important for Facebook, which has been slow to innovate in the fast-growing mobile arena in the important consumer space. By contrast, Instagram has taken the arena by storm, with its delightful and elegant app and the motto, “Fast beautiful photo sharing.” Consumers have responded. The San Francisco-based company — with only 13 employees — had 30 million Apple iPhone users before it came to Google’s Android last week, where it got more than a million new users in just 12 hours. Still, despite all the usage, Instagram had not articulated a plan for, you know, making money. Now, that will presumably be Facebook’s problem to solve.