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September 6, 2012

Facebook seals Instagram deal at $715m

The social network has jumped hurdles by the OFT and FTC to finalise its acquisition of Instagram for $715m.

By Tineka Smith

Instagram and Facebook

The deal was originally valued at over $1bn and meant to close in Q2 of this year but investigation delays have meant that the company will now receive a lower payout.

Facebook officially announced its plan to acquire Instagram back in April. However, the deal was put on hold due to investigations by the Federal Trade Commission and Office of Fair Trading fearing the company could monopolise photo uploads.

The OFT said that a main concern was to ensure that limits would not be placed on people uploading Instagram photos to other social networks.

"From the evidence we received it didn’t suggest that the parties would have the interest to pursue that (monopolisation) as a strategy," an OFT spokesperson told CBR.

In a statement about the Instagram purchase, Mark Zuckerberg said that it was an "important milestone for Facebook" as it was the first acquisition that had a product with a large amount of users.

"We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all," said Zuckerberg. "But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together."

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Zuckerberg has said he intends to keep the company running as a separate entity, rather than dissolve it into Facebook completely.

Instagram commented on the deal becoming final and asserted that the Instagram app and features will remain the same.

"Our deal with Facebook has closed which means we can now work together to evolve and build a better Instagram for everyone," said the company in a blog post. "While our team is making the short move to the Facebook offices, Instagram isn’t going anywhere.

The Instagram app and its features will stay the same one you know and love, and we’ll keep working together to build a better Instagram for everyone."

Facebook supports its former claim that Instagram will continue to run independently of Facebook.

"Instagram will continue to serve its community, and we will help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure," said the Facebook in a statement. "We also can’t wait to work with the talented Instagram team to improve the mobile experience."

Instagram is one of the fastest growing mobile apps to date. The mobile app has gained over 80 million users in under 2 years. It’s founders think it can hit 100 million by the end of 2012.

Please follow this author on Twitter @Tineka_S or comment below.

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