Report: Twitter offered to purchase Instagram for half of Facebook's purchase price

Just three weeks before they were purchased for $1 billion by Facebook, Instragram CEO Kevin Systrom had verbally agreed to be sold to Twitter.

The offer at the time was $525 million, but was obviously called off when the higher bid came in.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg offered $1 billion in a cash-and-stock deal, which eventually closed at $715 million following the decline in Facebook's stock value since May.

Twitter had given Instagram a term sheet with a proposed deal, but Systrom says they never received any "formal offers" from anyone but Facebook.

In the last month, Twitter has shut off the functionality that formerly allowed Twitter's official apps to display Instagram photos while introducing their own filters.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 17 Dec 2012 0:19

dali

Twitter didn't shut off anything. Instagram disabled the integration with Twitter Cards. Bad move, I'd say, but what do I know. I'm just a former user of both platforms who has now quit one of them (Instagram) for good.

"You know, it seems that quotes on the internet are becoming less and less reliable." -Abraham Lincoln.

17.12.2012 10:01 #1

Ripper

It baffles me that people use(d) Instagram in the first place.

17.12.2012 11:01 #2

dali

Originally posted by Ripper: It baffles me that people use(d) Instagram in the first place.
Absolutely right. I used it a couple of times just like any other photo sharing service, only because it was integrated with Twitter. I wasn't, and I am not, interested on it in any way now it is "on its own", and got a bit pissed off when I checked that my two pictures weren't anymore on Twitter.

I must acknowledge that there are some photo-geniuses out there who use it, though (don't ask me why). But most of Instagram lovers are people who simply think they are good photographers when clearly otherwise. All because of that infamous filters.

"You know, it seems that quotes on the internet are becoming less and less reliable." -Abraham Lincoln.

17.12.2012 11:47 #3

Ripper

I've briefly looked at Twitter's replacement 'add filters to your photos and pretend you're Andy Warhol' service and, unsurprisingly, it does just as good a job as Instagram.

So once everyone is over Instagram as a "social network" and realises this (which unfortunately will be longer than it should be), Facebook can stop pretending they didn't simply buy-out Instagram as competition and kill it off.

Edit: Your sig made me smile, dali

18.12.2012 15:43 #4

dali

It may be not that long. People are starting to leave Instagram massively because of its new privacy policies which, in short, would let them sell ads to companies using pictures picked from the ones posted on the platform with the photographers (who still kinda own them) not seeing a single dime of the cash from such deal.

For instance, they can publish an ad with a photo of you with some of your friends drinking Coca-Cola and put under it a facebook-style sentence such as "<your_nickname> likes Coca-Cola". They charge Coca-Cola for that, you get exposed, don't get paid, your friends hate you and don't let you take pictures of them ever again, and maybe you didn't even like Coca-Cola in the first place.

BTW, Abe is glad you like the sig. ;)

"You know, it seems that quotes on the internet are becoming less and less reliable." -Abraham Lincoln.

18.12.2012 18:53 #5

Ripper

Wasn't aware of that but it sounds like a very good way to get rid of your userbase very quickly - doesn't surprise me though.

18.12.2012 20:03 #6

dali

Well, now Instagram has commented officially on this topic (saying more or less what I had understood before) and many people is actually thinking that they have rectified... But they haven't. They just chose a different set of words to explain the very same thing.

"You know, it seems that quotes on the internet are becoming less and less reliable." -Abraham Lincoln.

19.12.2012 08:59 #7

Mrguss

Originally posted by dali: Well, now Instagram has commented officially on this topic (saying more or less what I had understood before) and many people is actually thinking that they have rectified... But they haven't. They just chose a different set of words to explain the very same thing. TACTICS: Instagram, grew off the back of Twitter. But in July 2012 following the Facebook acquisition, Twitter cut off access to its data, preventing Instagram users from importing their list of friends from Twitter.
In December, Instagram suddenly disabled its integration with Twitter so shared photos did not display in-line, forcing users to click through to Instagram's site. Twitter responded with its own Instagram-style photo filters and editing capabilities:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/techno...1221-2brcp.html

Instagram's New Terms of Service to Sell Your Photos:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/12/i...ell-your-photos

+5000

22.12.2012 18:52 #8

dali

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.c...ver_tos_changes

And I don't know if it's true, but some say that they pretend to keep owning your pictures even AFTER you have deleted your account. Insane.

"You know, it seems that quotes on the internet are becoming less and less reliable." -Abraham Lincoln.

26.12.2012 12:16 #9

dali

(Duplicate message, please ignore or delete it)

"You know, it seems that quotes on the internet are becoming less and less reliable." -Abraham Lincoln.

26.12.2012 12:16 #10

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