Facebook bought the photography service Instagram for about $1 billion. Instagram allows its users to post photos online to several social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. It is one of the fastest growing websites on the Internet.
Instagram is valuable due to its large user base, its intuitive design and its untapped marketing potential. The service started as a smartphone app that allowed users to upload pictures, apply filters to them and share them with their friends. While Instagram was only available on the iPhone and iPad for some time, the service recently released an app for Google Android smart phones.