Emily White, Facebook’s director of mobile partnerships, will now head business and partnerships at Instagram, according to a report from AllThingsD. The move indicates that the photo-sharing service is moving ever-closer to rolling out advertising and other revenue-minded features.
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Instagram users can now access their photo feeds via the desktop Web, according to co-founder Kevin Systrom.
This morning tech blogs and social media lit up with users reacting to changes to Instagram’s privacy policies, which some users took to give the company permission to sell user’s photographs to advertisers. Instagram has taken notice and has issued a response reassuring users that it is not claiming rights to their photos.
In order to speed up regulatory approval for Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, the parties sat down for a Fairness Hearing at the San Francisco offices of the California Department of Corporations. But Kevin Systrom failed to disclose in those meetings that Twitter had also offered to buy Instagram, according to a New York Times report.
Instagram has pulled its integration with the Twitter “cards” display format, making viewing Instagram photos on the microblogging site much less appealing. The move highlights growing competition between the two networks since Instagram was acquired by Facebook in April. Twitter has played the aggressor in other integration wars, also increasingly pushing for its content to be viewed on its own website, and few tech insiders publicly shed any tears for the company.
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Facebook Cleared to Issue Stock for Instagram Deal (The Wall Street Journal)
Facebook received approval Wednesday to use stock in its acquisition of photo-sharing application Instagram, clearing the way for a deal that has lost about a quarter of its value since an agreement in April. At a state hearing in San Francisco, Calif., to review the acquisition’s stock component, the California Department of Corporations found the deal to be “fair, just and equitable,” allowing Facebook to issue shares to Instagram. Los Angeles Times But Instagram founder and chief executive Kevin Systrom said in the hearing that he understood the ups and downs of the public markets and that the transaction is now worth more like $750 million. Business Insider The fairness hearing was the last regulatory hurdle the two companies had to face before the world’s largest social network could buy the hottest mobile photo-sharing startup. The companies opted to issue shares under California law rather than through the Securities and Exchange Commission, in part because it’s a faster process. San Francisco Chronicle
At the fairness hearing, Systrom was asked how his company made money, according to the Los Angeles Times. “That’s a great question,” the paper quoted Systrom. “As of right now, we do not.” AllFacebook The word on Wednesday was that Facebook could consider purchasing Waze, developer of a well-liked, free, community-based traffic-nav app. Waze has nearly 6,200 users talking about it and the app has garnered 126,000 likes. Read more
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In Facebook Deal, Board Was All But Out of Picture (The Wall Street Journal)
On the morning of Sunday, April 8, Facebook Inc.’s youthful chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, alerted his board of directors that he intended to buy Instagram, the hot photo-sharing service. It was the first the board heard of what, later that day, would become Facebook’s largest acquisition ever, according to several people familiar with the matter. AllFacebook Zuckerberg negotiated with his Instagram counterpart down from an original $2 billion offer, asking Systrom whether he thought Facebook could one day be worth more than $200 billion, roughly the size of Google. Systrom agreed to the one percent or roughly $1 billion in stock. SocialTimes Normally a deal like this takes several days, if not weeks, to complete, and usually involves more lawyers and bankers than were present during the negotiations. Gizmodo It was a bold strategy, and one that smacks of the kind of approach a small start-up might take. It’s not, however, the way most people might expect a multi-million dollar public organization to conduct business. TechCrunch This just in: According to multiple sources close to the company, Facebook is eying an IPO on May 17th — depending on whether the SEC agrees that all the reams of paperwork (including those concerning its recent acquisition of Instagram) are in order. PRNewser The Ad Age Digital Conference continued Wednesday with a presentation from David Fischer, Facebook’s VP of business and marketing partnerships, whose presentation could be boiled down to this: “Your brand needs an always-on strategy.” Read more
Mobile photo-sharing startup Instagram snapped its first major partnership, reaching an agreement with National Geographic, and Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom told TechCrunch details are still in the works as to how the two companies will collaborate.
Systrom told TechCrunch the two parties had been in talks for weeks, and National Geographic has still not determined how it will use Instagram, but the first priority will be engaging fans, whether through photo-sharing or crowdsourcing. He added:
National Geographic makes a ton of sense as an initial partner — they’re a fantastic company with such a rich visual history. Given that they’re so visually oriented, it’s a no-brainer that we’re going to be trying some interesting stuff out with them over the next few months.
Basically, we’ve been going back-and-forth — brainstorming ideas for how NG can participate in the community. They’d like to participate more actively with their fans through photos — whether it’s enabling people from around the world to tell their story through an interesting prompt/contest, or crowdsourcing images for an upcoming story — everything’s on the table.
They’ve also got a huge photographer/reporter base that could contribute images “on the ground” as things happen — imagine a “live” version of National Geographic. But again, this is all very early, and we’re excited to figure out how NG and other brands can fully utilize our platform.
