The big internet shock from the other day is that Instagram was purchased by Facebook. I have mixed feelings about this. My immediate reaction is that this is bad for innovation. A large, well established company buys a small but energetic company and probably ruins what’s great about it. Then I think about examples like when Google bought YouTube or Apple bought Siri and brought those products to new heights. But I’m not sure why Facebook needs Instagram. It doesn’t belong with Facebook. It’s the same reason I use Foursquare instead of Facebook’s Places app or WordPress instead of Facebook Notes, or Twitter instead of updating Facebook 12 times a day (and yes, I’m calling all of you who link Twitter and Facebook out). Instagram just feels right as a separate app. I know that the plan is supposedly to keep Instagram as a separate service, but I’m a little skeptical of this in the long-term.
Then there is the problem with how much Facebook has ballooned. One of the main reasons that Facebook put Myspace down to rest, is that it was much more reliable, easy to use, secure, and sleeker looking. Facebook changes things frequently (and I’m not just talking about the big/obvious changes) and almost always seems to have bugs nowadays. I think Facebook needs to pull itself together before it goes out buying up other perfectly good companies and attempting to integrate them. Who knows, if they don’t, Google+ might actually stand a chance.
