In 2012, Facebook spent 1 billion dollars to purchase Instagram. At the time, it seemed like an outrageous amount of money to pay since the network had only 30 million users. Facebook, at the time was weak on mobile prior to their public days on the stock market. Buying Instagram allowed them to immediately increase their performance in that area.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg committed to keeping Instagram and independent app rather than mashing the technology into the Facebook app. Here we are 6 years later and we have great reason to it’s that very independence that is allowing Instagram to overtake Facebook.
