Five Billion Served: Instagram Officially Joins Facebook

Facebook has just announced that it is officially welcoming Instagram into its fold. The announcement came after Facebook was given the green light to proceed with the acquisition by the United States Federal Trade Commission. Even though the deal was valued at $1 billion at the time of announcement in April this year, it's now worth much less due to the declining value of Facebook's stock which was a significant part of the transaction.

While Mark Zuckerberg already said that Facebook plans to maintain Instagram separate from Facebook, today's press release reiterated that intention, saying that, "we are committed to building and growing Instagram independently." The communities that have sprung up through Instagram would greatly appreciate this move as they tend to be close knit and with Instagram having around 100 million users, it's not a good idea to mess around with a nest full of bees.

At the same time, Instagram made its own announcement on its blog highlighting that it has now served more than five billion photos on its service. Instagram noted in the post that since the deal has closed, the team will move to Facebook's offices although the team will keep refining and improving Instagram.

What may be different though, is the fact that Facebook will now devote some of its resources to Instagram. The small Instagram team will find itself in the middle of a much larger team with a much broader infrastructure, both of which have been committed by Facebook to improve Instagram.

Facebook's post made a mention of the company's intention to bring the skills of the Instagram team to assist with Facebook's mobile apps. Facebook has just rebuilt its main app for iOS from the ground up after learning that it simply cannot deliver a high performing app by serving web pages pretending to be a native application. Its Messages app and Camera app, especially the Camera app, might see a boost in resources to make sure that they remain high quality.

Despite the assurances from Zuckerberg, Facebook vice president Mike Schroepfer, and Instagram itself, one can't help but wonder if and how Instagram would change under Facebook. Sure, the core function of the app may not change, but when it comes to improving an app, there's never an assurance that it will remain the same. After all, even without Facebook, there have been changes in Instagram, albeit subtle, most notably the replacement of its Popular section with Explore.