Facebook and Instagram on Thursday announced that Facebook’s $1 billion purchase of the popular-photo sharing app has been officially completed, and the two companies are about to get started on a new era of joint development on the same projects. Both also re-iterated that Instagram will remain a separate app and community, at least for the time being.
As a post on the Instagram blog explains:
What makes this even more exciting is that our deal with Facebook has closed, which means we can now work together to evolve and build a better Instagram for everyone. 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 engineering VP Mike Schroepfer also posted a news release on Facebook’s offical press site, which reads in part:
As we said from the beginning, we are committed to building and growing Instagram independently. 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.
