Zuckerberg FTW: Facebook Instagram Deal Was A Steal At $1 Billion

Sure, Mark Zuckerberg has gotten a lot wrong this year, but his wisest move in Facebook’s first year as a public company was his acquisition of Instagram for $1 billion. Seems like a pretty steep price tag for the popular image sharing site, but business experts are saying that when all is said and done, Facebook got the better end of the deal.

These shocking statistics from AppData (the social network industry’s most trusted source of mobile and Facebook application user numbers) show incredible growth since Facebook closed its deal to acquire Instagram. The photo-sharing app for Android and iPhone boasted some 860,000 daily active users when the deal was finalized. Since then,that number has grown dramatically – to 11 million.

To put that in perspective, that is 1179% growth in six months, notes Business Insider.

Though the deal is a definite home-run for Facebook, there is a bit of a downside. It is estimated that more people will access the internet through mobile devices than home computers or laptops by the end of this decade. Facebook and Instagram boast a high number of mobile users (Twitter holds second place between the two), but it’s hard to make money with ads placed next to pictures.

A promising solution is Facebook’s sale of ad units called “Sponsored Stories.” These go right into the News Feed in Facebook’s mobile app, and could easily fit into the Instagram home screen. These units bring in about $500,000 for Facebook each day.

So, way to go Zuckerberg. That Facebook/Instagram deal paid some seriously dramatic dividends.