{"id":34177,"date":"2026-09-18T08:10:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T08:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/folnova.com\/when-did-facebook-buy-instagram\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T08:02:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T08:02:42","slug":"when-did-facebook-buy-instagram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/folnova.com\/en-ca\/when-did-facebook-buy-instagram\/","title":{"rendered":"When did Facebook buy Instagram?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Facebook bought Instagram in 2012. On April 9, 2012, Facebook announced the agreement, but the acquisition had not yet been completed. The official welcome message followed on September 6, 2012. If you want to give a precise purchase date, specify whether you mean the announcement or the completion of the acquisition.<\/p>\n<p>Below, you will read about the difference, the price Facebook announced, and why Instagram is now part of Meta.<\/p>\n<nav aria-label=\"Table of contents\">\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"#datum-overname\">When was Instagram\u2019s acquisition completed?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#prijs-instagram\">How much did Facebook pay for Instagram?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#reden-overname\">Why was Instagram interesting to Facebook?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#instagram-meta\">Does Instagram now belong to Facebook or Meta?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#geschiedenis\">More about the history of Facebook and Instagram<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/nav>\n<h2 id=\"datum-overname\">When was Instagram\u2019s acquisition completed?<\/h2>\n<p>The announcement and the completion are two different moments. First, the companies announce their agreement. Then they still have to complete the acquisition.<\/p>\n<p>On September 6, 2012, Facebook published the <a href=\"https:\/\/about.fb.com\/news\/2012\/09\/welcoming-instagram-to-facebook\/\">official welcome message for Instagram<\/a>. The date of such a message does not necessarily correspond exactly to the day on which the acquisition was legally completed. The message therefore does not confirm that exact day.<\/p>\n<p>If someone asks you which year Facebook bought Instagram, <strong>2012<\/strong> is the answer. If you use April 9, 2012, call it the announcement date, not the final purchase date.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"prijs-instagram\">How much did Facebook pay for Instagram?<\/h2>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/about.fb.com\/news\/2012\/04\/facebook-to-acquire-instagram\/amp\/\">official announcement of the acquisition<\/a> stated a price of <strong>approximately 1 billion dollars<\/strong>, in cash and Facebook shares.<\/p>\n<p>Facebook therefore did not pay the entire amount in cash. A share is a small piece of ownership in a company. Anyone who receives shares as payment thereby becomes a partial owner of that company.<\/p>\n<p>Shares can become more or less valuable. As a result, the value at completion may differ from the amount stated at the announcement. The billion dollars is therefore the <strong>announced price<\/strong>, not an exact final amount paid entirely in cash.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"reden-overname\">Why was Instagram interesting to Facebook?<\/h2>\n<p>Instagram centred on sharing photos from your phone. That fit with Facebook, where people keep in touch and share posts. With a photo, you can quickly show others what you are doing.<\/p>\n<p>This helps explain why Instagram was a logical addition to Facebook. It explains how the services fit together, but not which reason within Facebook ultimately led it to buy Instagram.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"instagram-meta\">Does Instagram now belong to Facebook or Meta?<\/h2>\n<p>Instagram is now part of <strong>Meta<\/strong>. That is the name of the parent company formerly known as Facebook. A parent company is a company that owns other companies.<\/p>\n<p>The social network is still called Facebook. As a result, \u201cInstagram belongs to Facebook\u201d can be confusing. It matters whether you mean the company or the app:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>At the time of the purchase:<\/strong> the company that acquired Instagram was called Facebook.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Now:<\/strong> the parent company is called Meta.<\/li>\n<li><strong>In everyday use:<\/strong> Instagram and Facebook are separate apps, even though they belong to the same company.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 id=\"geschiedenis\">More about the history of Facebook and Instagram<\/h2>\n<p>Instagram already existed before Facebook bought it. The purchase date is therefore not the founding date. Would you like to know when the app started? Read <a href=\"https:\/\/folnova.com\/en-ca\/when-was-instagram-founded\/\">when Instagram was founded<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Are you also curious about the beginning of Facebook? Continue reading about <a href=\"https:\/\/folnova.com\/en-ca\/when-was-facebook-founded\/\">when Facebook was founded<\/a>. If you also publish your own content, our <a href=\"https:\/\/folnova.com\/en-ca\/product-category\/instagram\/\">Instagram services<\/a> includes packages for <a href=\"https:\/\/folnova.com\/en-ca\/product\/buy-instagram-followers\/\">followers<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/folnova.com\/en-ca\/product\/buy-instagram-likes\/\">likes<\/a>. The product pages show the available quantities and prices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Facebook announced the acquisition of Instagram on April 9, 2012. Read about the difference between the announcement and the completion, and what the price was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24226,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[884],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-instagram"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/folnova.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/folnova.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/folnova.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/folnova.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/folnova.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/folnova.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63081,"href":"https:\/\/folnova.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34177\/revisions\/63081"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/folnova.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/folnova.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/folnova.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/folnova.com\/en-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}