Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Facebook has acquired the antique photo-filtering/sharing service Instagram for $1 billion in "a combination of cash and shares." 

The Founder took to his profile to make the announcement, stating that the whole Instagram team will be making the transition and, most interestingly, that the company and brand will be grown "independently" of the networking service.

We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.

Even though this is claimed, expect to see some deeper Facebook integration into the Instagram app, as he goes on to say that the social network's "strong engineering team and infrastructure" will help to grow the shrine for antique photography.  This marks the first company that Facebook has ever bought, and with their 'community-first' outlook that seems to be taking priority from what Zuckerberg has written, it might be quite the worthwhile one.  Now if they can do us a favour and quieten the iOS users with a disdain for Android's version of Instagram..

Source: Facebook, Instagram blog