Filtering A Billion Dollars

My ongoing coverage of the Instagram acquisition over at MacStories. After my take on today’s news, I am commenting on the best coverage found on the Internet – I am glad not everyone is acting like this. Courtney Boyd Myers had another particularly good story at The Next Web.

I typically don’t care about acquisitions, but I find today’s news one of the most exciting things that have happened to mobile and photo sharing in a while. I use Facebook, I use Instagram, and I am genuinely excited about the promise of Instagram’s essence and nature being kept alive. I am one of those people who are intrigued by Facebook’s internal culture, and who think the company has basically won the race to the de-facto social network product.

I hope Zuckerberg understands they could elegantly transition Instagram to becoming a Facebook product without ruining it. They should use Instagram as a way to gain new users and explore a new space, a new area of mobile. It’s uncharted territory for big companies like Facebook.

Facebook has the resources, scale, and talent to keep Instagram as it is, possibly better, perhaps more connected to the social network.

Here’s to hoping Facebook will be clever, too.