Facebook's Pocket Change

Just yesterday, Facebook announced that they purchased the young start-up, Instagram for the price of $1 billion in cash and shares.

With the growth of mobile use for social media sites like Facebook, it is not surprising that they are taking advantage of their wealth to enhance their photo-uploading features with a program like Instagram. Based in San Francisco, Instagram has been growing rapidly as a photo-sharing application for iPhones, with over 30 million users. Now that they have adapted to Google's Android just last week, they got more than a million users in just over 12 hours of it being available.

Apparently the purchase does not mean that Instagram is going away, they are simply going to be incorporating it into Facebook's huge following of users to expand their network, according to CEO Kevin Systrom.

Facebook CEO and Founder, Mark Zuckerberg, said in a press release for the announcement, "For years, we've focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we'll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests."

Hm. Based on our interests? This seems like another way for Facebook to directly advertise to user accounts by recording what photos they upload.

What do you think about Facebook's new purchase? Do you use Instagram?

Read the full press release here.