Instagram Deal Is Billion-Dollar Move Toward Cellphone From PC

A picture’s worth much more than a thousand words to Facebook. Last April — a year ago today, in fact — the social media giant agreed to buy the quickly growing photo-sharing social network Instagram for a cool $1 billion (the final price, a mixture of cash and stock, was $715 million because Facebook shares tumbled before the deal was finalized).

Nick Bilton’s column about the Instagram fairness hearing is annoying on a number of levels. When I mentioned one of them this morning, Dave Winer asked for “a brief post” explaining a bit more. OK then!

When Facebook so chooses it can make startup entrepreneurs and the venture capitalists that invest in them very rich.

Less than a day after Twitter launched Vine, Facebook has cut off the video-sharing application’s “find people” button, which allowed members to connect to their Facebook friends.

Five months after the deal was first announced, the Federal Trade Commission cleared Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, the popular mobile photo-sharing application.

By Jacob Steinberg:Finally the Federal Trade Commission gave Facebook (FB) an "ok" to buy Instagram. Initially, the cost of the deal for Facebook was $300 million cash and 23 million shares of Facebook. At the time of the deal, 23 million Facebook shares were worth $700 million, bringing the deal to $1 billion.

Facebook announced a billion-dollar-deal to buy the startup behind wildly popular smartphone photo sharing application Instagram.The big ticket purchase was seen by some as a move by Facebook to strengthen defenses against Google and blazingly hot newcomer Pinterest in the weeks ahead of what promises to be a history-making stock market debut."For years, we've focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family," Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said in announcing the deal.