Instagram’s team has two things to be proud of today – reaching 1 million downloads from the Android marketplace (or Google Play as its called now-a-days) within 12 hours of launch and then also being bought over by Facebook for 1 billion. Yes, Facebook just bought Instagram for 1 billion!
In case you have been living under a stone for an year now… Instagram is a mobile-only photo-sharing application popular on the iPhone. After a year, they have launched on Android.
Maybe because of the speed at which it works (when compared to other photo apps)….within a short span Instagram reached 30 million users on iPhone itself – and let me assure you thats a good number against your resume. It is believed that there are a total of 350 million iOS users in the world – this means almost every tenth iPhone has Instagram installed in it.
Here is what Mark Zukerberg has to say about this acquisition: “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.”
And why not? Facebook is known to host around 150 Billion photos, even as we speak. Compare this with about 10 Billion on Flickr & Picasa individually – Facebook is way ahead. And because Flickr and Picasa aren’t as much of a social network as Facebook is…these pics don’t just rest on Facebook’s servers – they get downloaded to be viewed as well.
With such a strong photos presence, would Facebook have let one more Photos star emerge in the horizon? Especially since Instagram users were uploading 5 million photos per day.
I somehow feel this acquisition by Facebook is meant to kill Instagram and not use it.
Why do I feel that Facebook will kill Instagram? Because history suggests so. Digest this:
– Google acquired Aardvark for $50 million on February 11, 2010 and in September 2011 announced that it would be discontinued.
– Yahoo bought online video distribution and advertising platform provider Maven Networks for 160 million. To shut it down later.
– Picnik was acquired by Google, and is shutting down on 19 April 2012
– Facebook acquired Gowalla and then killed it. Gowalla’s engineers worked on Facebook checkins….but it really wasn’t the same
So do you agree? Have we seen the end of Instagram?
