Facebook Acquires Instagram For A $730 Million Price Tag

Facebook has completed its acquisition of popular image sharing social network Instagram, according to separate blog posts from both companies that went up Thursday morning. The $730 million dollar deal was approved by the California Department of Corporations in San Francisco and the Federal Trade Commission late last month.

“As we said from the beginning, we are committed to building and growing Instagram independently,” Facebook’s Mike Schroepfer wrote. “Instagram will continue to serve its community, and we will help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure. We also can’t wait to work with the talented Instagram team to improve the mobile experience.”

“The Instagram app will still be the same one you know and love,” Instagram founder Kevin Systrom added.

Both Schroepfer and Systrom stated that Instagram will continue to develop and evolve its own product after the full Facebook acquisition. The deal was worth $1 billion when Facebook and Instagram agreed to it in April, but after Facebook’s stock dropped from around $31 per share to $19 per share, the price of the deal fell to $730 million. “Had Facebook or Instagram insisted on a floating share exchange ratio, as the vast majority of acquisition deals do, Instagram might have been able to fetch a higher price,” notes Mashable.