Facebook Buys Instagram...

Facebook has just finished a deal to acquire mobile photo sharing app Instagram  for approximately $1 billion in cash and stock. Instagram will remain an independently branded standalone app that’s separate from Facebook, but the services will increase their ties to each other. The transaction should go through this quarter pending some standard closing procedures Last year, documents for a standalone Facebook mobile photo sharing app were attained by TechCrunch. Now it seems Facebook would rather buy Instagram which comes with a built-in community of photographers and photo lovers, while simultaneously squashing a threat to its dominance in photo sharing. At 27 million registered users on iOS alone, Instagram was increasingly positioning itself as a social network in its own right — not just a photo-sharing app. And it was clear that some users were doing more of the daily sharing actvities on Instagram rather than Facebook’s all-in-one mobile apps, which had to be cluttered with nearly every feature of the desktop site. With the Instagram for Android launch last week, Instagram was going to get to 50 million registered users in a heartbeat after racking up more than 1 million in the first 24 hours. And with that kind of momentum, Facebook felt like it had to move — fast. After all, photo sharing and tagging are arguably what *made* Facebook. Whatever you think of the price given the fact that Instagram had no revenues, the reality is it was going to be worth whatever Mark Zuckerberg felt like paying for it. Both Google and Facebook had approached Instagram several times over the past 18 months, but the talks clearly didn’t result in a deal. So Facebook was going to have to offer a huge premium over the last valuation for Systrom and the board to take any deal seriously. [Instagram's founders from left, Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom. Portrait by Cody Pickens ] With the deal, Instagram will gain massive design and engineering resources by joining forces with Facebook, a big change after running as a famously lean company with just a handful of employees. Still, the deal seems to let Instagram stay somewhat independent and maintain some of its company culture. Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom writes in a blog post , “It’s important to be clear that Instagram is not going away.” This is a really big departure from the way Zuckerberg has historically run Facebook as a single  product. He has always been insistent that everything feed back into Facebook itself. Keeping Instagram as a separate product and brand is reminiscent of what Google has done with keeping YouTube and Android as separate fiefdoms within the company following their acquisitions. Instagram’s investors  included Benchmark Capital, Greylock Capital, Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, along with angel investors including Quora’s Adam D’Angelo, Lowercase Capital’s Chris Sacca and Square and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey. The early investors must be thrilled with the price. From our understanding, the later investors, who put capital into the company at a $500 million valuation , seem happy with basically getting a 2X in a few days after the money was wired last Thursday. Congratulations to Instagram’s founders Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom. You opened the world’s eyes to seeing art in everyday life, and now Facebook has opened its doors to you. So in your honor, we’ve made you part of the TechCrunch home page logo . More on the acquisition: Right Before Acquisition, Instagram Closed $50M At A $500M Valuation From Sequoia, Thrive, Greylock And Benchmark With Instagram Buy, Facebook Officially Pushes M&A Strategy Beyond The ‘Acqui-hire’ With Over 30 Million Users On iOS, Instagram Finally Comes To Android – Mark Zuckerberg posted the following letter to his Timeline about the purchase: I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook. For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests. We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook. That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people. We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook. These and many other features are important parts of the Instagram experience and we understand that. We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features into our other products. At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure. This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together. We’re looking forward to working with the Instagram team and to all of the great new experiences we’re going to be able to build together. [Additional reporting by Kim-Mai Cutler, Image Credit: Max Woolf ]

Microsoft And TiVo Drop...

Microsoft is dropping its patent lawsuit against set-top box maker TiVo, in which Microsoft had complained of not only copyright infringement, but had also threatened a ban on importing TiVo’s hardware and software into the U.S. And TiVo has agreed to drop its suits against Microsoft, as well. For background, following TiVo’s win of $100 million from Echostar/DISH, it went after AT&T and Verizon , alleging their services illegally used its “time-warping” technology in their DVRs. However, because AT&T’s U-Verse television service is powered by Microsoft’s Mediaroom, the Redmond-based company stepped in to countersue in 2010, claiming TiVo was infringing on a patent Microsoft owned, including, specifically: a system that displays programmable information and a secure method for buying and delivering video programs. (Nope, not overly broad at all.) When that suit alone didn’t have enough punch to it, Microsoft added  to it in January 2011, with a second complaint (and more patents) that could have led to a ban on TiVo’s ability to import into the U.S. Microsoft had filed suits in both Washington and with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) on the matter. The judge was scheduled to release his findings in the ITC case next month. Maybe neither side liked what he was going to say, and decided to figure things out themselves. Imagine that. On Thursday, both sides agreed to drop their lawsuits. A patent stalemate, perhaps. In regulatory claims, TiVo said it didn’t grant patent rights to Microsoft and agreed to drop its claims. Microsoft then did the same.

Cisco, Benchmark And Ve...

CTERA Networks , a company that provides managed cloud-based storage and data protection for SMBs, has raised an undisclosed round of funding led by Venrock, with a strategic investment from Cisco Systems and participation of existing investor Benchmark Capital. Venrock partner Ray Rothrock will join CTERA’s board of directors. CTERA Networks helps bridge the gap between cloud and local storage for small to medium-sized businesses as well as large companies. The company provides solutions to cloud service providers to better serve customers, allowing them to provide cloud-based data protection and other services. Service providers and enterprises use CTERA to deliver services such as backup, cloud on-ramping, file sharing, folder synchronization, and mobile access based on the storage infrastructure of their choice. The company’s CloudPlug computing device transforms any external USB hard drive into a NAS device with automatic backup. The contents of any attached USB drive are automatically backed up online. CTERA says that it has seen seven consecutive quarters of double-digit revenue growth and now reaches more than 100,000 business end-users, primarily in North America and Europe. The new round of funding will be used to further accelerate the expansion of the CTERA team and towards meeting product demand.

Need A New iPad? Here’s...

If you’re looking to get a new iPad and happen to have an old one (and by old, I mean the iPad 2), Apple just made it that much easier. Apple’s Reuse and Recycling Program has been updated today to reflect the values for various models of the iPad 2. The program offers Apple gift cards in exchange for your old gadgetry, which will hopefully entice you to trade-in instead of lopping your perfectly good components into a land fill. Not only are you saving a few bucks, but you’re being green. And more importantly, the savings you’ll get by trading in your iPad 2 for a new one are pretty great. According to TNW , these are the trade-in values of all iPad 2 editions: iPad 2 Wifi (16GB) – $205 iPad 2 Wifi + 3G (16GB) – $250 iPad 2 Wifi (32GB) – $245 iPad 2 Wifi + 3G (32GB) – $280 iPad 2 Wifi (64GB) – $275 iPad 2 Wifi + 3G (64GB) – $320 The worst part about being an Apple fan is that it’s almost impossible to not have the new, new thing. Apple’s Reuse and Recycling program makes that issue a bit easier, as do other services like eBay Instant Sale . The point is: it’s much better to get some cash and reuse components than it is to throw this stuff in the trash, so if you’re ready to trade the old in for the new, head on over to Apple’s trade-in page by clicking here .

PinClout Gets A Cease-A...

“Klout for Pinterest” is a catchy company description, but it might not be a good idea to take it too literally. Startup PinClout launched about a week ago, and its name seemed to make the company’s mission clear — to measure influence on fast-growing Pinterest . And there’s been positive interest, with some tech press coverage and what co-founder Chris Fay said is an average of 2,000 to 3,000 unique visitors every day. (Amazingly, it’s not the only “ Klout for Pinterest .”) However, the company just received a letter from Klout’s attorney asking it to “immediately cease and desist from all use of or plans to use the PINCLOUT mark and the www.pinclout.com domain name.” The letter argues that PinClout’s name is “confusingly similar” to Klout for several reasons: The similarity between the words, the similarity between the services, the fact that they’re directed at similar consumers, and the similar marketing channels. PinClout co-founder Chris Fay said he was “really surprised” to get the letter. He argued that despite the superficial similarities, PinClout has different aims from Klout — yes, it provides a score between 1 and 100 to rate a user’s influence, but he said the real aim is to provide analytics tools to businesses so they can increase that influence: “It’s not really about the score itself.” Nonetheless, Fay said that on the advice of PinClout’s lawyer, the company will be changing its name rather than getting embroiled in an long and costly legal fight. The new name is still being decided. (I pointed out that if his goal was to create something that isn’t just Klout for Pinterest, changing the name might not be a bad idea, and Fay agreed: “We can utilize this to show that we are different from them.”) I called a Klout spokesperson, who told me the company welcomes new entries into a market they invented but also feels it’s important to avoid confusion and “protect the brand” — for themselves and for partners. I’ve embedded the letter below. View this document on Scribd