Zuckerberg Flew Solo – Lowered Instagram Asking Price by $1 Billion

A couple of weeks ago, Facebook took everybody by surprise when they acquired Instagram; the massively popular — though not yet profitable — photo-sharing application. A few days ago we learned that they may have only just beat Twitter to the punch. Now rumors are flying about that Mark Zuckerberg not only acted on his own — without the Facebook board’s knowledge — but managed to lower Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom’s asking price from $2 billion to the reported $1 billion that Facebook shelled out.

The rumors come mainly from a report in the Wall Street Journal, which claims that Zuckerberg called Systrom on April 5th and invited him down to his Palo Alto home for negotiations. The report even claims that, funny enough, Facebook board member Marc Andreessen was surprised when he ran into Systrom at Mark Zuckerberg’s home the day the deal was closed.

The Inquirer are calling the reported solo-act a final “burst of youthful exuberance” but Zuckerberg may have acted just in time, as any delay may have prevented them from acquiring the wildly-popular company which recorded 10 million Android downloads in the first 10 days the app was available on Google Play.

Unfortunately, this popularity doesn’t come without a few enemies; and now those enemies are Facebook’s concern. Just this week several fake Instagram for Android download sites were discovered. If a user installs one of these malware versions of the app their phone begins sending out text messages to premium rate numbers. So users beware — even a billion dollar acquisition comes with downsides.


Image credit: Photo by Andrew Feinberg

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