Facebook has announced it is to buy Instagram - the popular photo-sharing smartphone app.
Facebook is paying $1bn (£629m) in cash and stock for the takeover.Instagram was only launched in October 2010 - initially just for the iPhone before being offered as an Android app last week.
Facebook's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to continue to develop Instagram as a separate brand, allowing it to post to rival networks.
The app is free and allows users to apply 17 filters to the pictures they take - changing the colour balance to give the images a different feel - before they are uploaded.
It has proven hugely popular. The firm says that it has more than 30 million users uploading more than 5 million new pictures every day.
Paul Kedrosky, a tech investor and author of the Infectious Greed blog, told the BBC: "I understand Instagram has 13 employees - so at $77m a head that makes it the most expensive business deal in history that I can think of."
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