Instagram Founders Agree to Facebook Buyout The popular photo sharing app will likely be acquired for $1 billion, reports say.
By Jason Fell
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The co-founders of Instagram have agreed to sell the popular photo sharing app to social network giant Facebook. The sale price could be around $1 billion, according to reports.
Not bad for a coupla years' work. Released in 2010, Instagram has seen its user base skyrocket from 1 million users in January 2011 to around 30 million today. Instagram had raised about $47.5 million in venture funding from groups including Andreessen Horowitz as well as individual investors such as Twitter's Jack Dorsey.
On Instagram's blog, co-founder Kevin Systrom says the Instagram app is not going away and that the company's 12-person San Francisco-based team will work with Facebook to continue to "evolve Instagram and build the network."
While Facebook will use some of Instagram's features in its existing products, founder Mark Zuckerberg says in a post that the Instagram team will be joining the social network and Facebook will grow Instagram independently.
A request for comment from Systrom and fellow co-founder Mike Krieger was not immediately returned.
Meanwhile, Facebook is poised to go public sometime this year with a valuation of roughly $100 billion.
