Twitter, Instagram and the $525 million acquisition deal which was “verbally agreed”
The Twitter-Instagram plot thickens as it has emerged that Twitter made a $525m bid to acquire the photo effects site before Facebook, which was sealed with a “verbal agreement”.
However, at the time when the $735 million Facebook-Instagram deal was being scrutinised, Instagram’s chief executive and co-founder, Kevin Systrom, explicitly told regulators that no other bids had been received, in case it jeopardised the deal.
The news comes days after Instagram stopped allowing Twitter to embed images in tweets, instead when Instagram members share a photograph via Twitter it now appears as a text link.
Systrom said he wanted its members to view their photographs within Instagram, or Facebook; in response Twitter introduced its own filter feature as it tries to share more “rich” multimedia material to compete directly with Facebook.