If you told me a year ago that someone could earn $1 billion dollars by posting photos (which are lower quality) on Facebook I would have laughed at you. Well clearly Instagram is the bus driver, cause they took us to school…! For those of of you who do not know, Instagram is a mobile photo-sharing app. Just like Pinterest and so many others, you can tie Instagram updates from your phone into your Facebook feed.

So fun, Instagram! Thx to 9to5mac for the image.

Strangely enough I have never gotten into Instagram. My choice for FB photo fun was Path. I picked Path due to my loyalty to former Apple colleagues. At first it was really fun, you could put these freaky filters on photos and everyone in the frame looked super hep. I had only 50 people to share photos with on Path, but I found that the group I wanted to share with was about 10 or less. The number of friends limit didn’t really bother me. Overall it was a fun thing I tried a few times. Neither Instagram nor Path really got into my daily list of apps, but photos aren’t my ‘thing’ per se.

What’s interesting about the Instagram acquisition to me are two things, first is the price tag and second is the inevitable harvest. I can think of exactly why Facebook would be interested in Instagram’s app; for gaining mobile advertising intelligence as well as design improvements to the FB mobile interface. Facebook’s mobile app is a joke and I’ve removed it from my phone long ago. Push notifications were impossible to get rid of and I often wondered what was happening with my location data. I am 99% sure that every time the app updated all settings defaulted the least private options. Call me paranoid, but data is a big game and Facebook wants to win it. Instagram’s buy out was a sign that Facebook is in a total mid-life crisis.