Instagram‘s sale to facebook for $1 Billion – that’s $ 1000 000 000. Folks that’s a looooooot of money!
While countless people have given countless reasons for the astronomical price of a seemingly simple app – an app that applies filters to photos before sharing with others, I am not going to give mine. I may agree that Facebook may have felt threatened that their core element that engages and binds their users together, photos, may soon be hosted and owned by another company.
Ironically what made Instagram popular are facebook users. People sharing photos on facebook using their smart phone cameras and Instagram app. What if the smart phones had a built-in app to share photos with facebook? iPhone decided to integrate twitter and it killed many and any such apps for twitter but it did not integrate facebook and Instagram filled that void with amazing grace.
If smart phones had integrated facebook with their system, I don’t think facebook would have bought Instagram for $1 Billion or bought it at all!