Twitter 'tried to buy out Instagram just months BEFORE Facebook'
Twitter tried to buy photosharing app Instagram before Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg snapped it up for $1billion, it has been claimed.
According to reports, Jack Dorsey, Twitter's co-founder and an early Instagram investor, tried to purchase the cult mobile phone app just months prior to the deal with Facebook last week.
Just 18 months after the app's launch, Instagram's development team have been made multimillionaires by the Facebook deal, with CEO Kevin Systrom netting a cool $400 million.
Before founding his company, Mr Systrom, 28, had been an intern at Twitter and he had sent Mr Dorsey an early version of Instagram to help whip up interest in the app.
Mr Dorsey invested venture capital in the nascent Instagram in February 2011, and he used it to post photos via his Twitter account on a near-daily basis, the New York Times reported.Read more
Instagram, with roughly a dozen employees based in San Francisco, closed a $50 million funding round last week from investors including Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners, according to a source familiar with the matter. The funding valued the company, founded in early 2010, at $500 million, it said.
The Instagram application, which allows users to add filters and effects to pictures taken on their iPhone and Android devices and to share those photos with their friends, has gained about 30 million users since it launched in January 2011.Read More
