In the last few months the Instagram photo sharing application has been in the news a lot with its growing user’s base, and then the release of a version on the Android platform. It has just been announced that Facebook as swooped to snap up Instagram in a massive deal.

The social networking giant hasn’t waited until its public offering before going out and making some new acquisitions, and as The New York Times is reporting the deal has cost Facebook around $1 billion in cash and stock. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed he plans to build Instagram independently from the social network and will allow users to post onto other social networks, and to even opt out of sharing on Facebook.

Zuckerberg stated that his company had always “focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family”, and now after the deal will “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”.

In the past Facebook has purchased other companies but these have normally been for smaller deals below $100 million. The company went on to say that they are looking forward to working with the team behind the Instagram application for “new experiences”.

The recent release of the app onto the Android platform was met with some disappointment from some users who wondered what all the fuss was about, but with a company the size of Facebook behind it we could see more and even better features added to the Instagram app.

Do you think Facebook has done a good deal buying Instagram?