Facebook Buys Instagram for $1 Billion in Cash and Stock

Facebook abruptly bought Instagram this week Monday for $1 billion in cash and stock, the largest purchase Facebook has made to date. The acquisition sparked a lot of negative buzz, with many people wondering why Facebook would overpay for a company – Instagram was valued at $500 million in a venture capital series last week. Of the 201,000 mentions of the acquisition tracked on Twitter, just 12 percent of them were rated as positive and 35 percent were explicitly negative.

Instagram is a photosharing app available on the iTunes App Store.