Facebook/Instagram Saga

I'm sure everyone's been hearing a lot about Facebook's recent purchase of Instagram for a whopping $1 billion. While this has many a hipster shaking in their boots (maybe even more so than Instagram's new availability on Android), I think there are some real, concerning questions to be raised outside of the fact that pretty much everyone you went to high school with will now be sharing sepia-toned photos on Facebook (probably of their babies and/or pets).

1.) What's going to happen to Instagram's ease of usability in terms of sharing with other social networks?
One of my favorite things about Instagram is how easy it easy for me to snap a picture and then post it to Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr. This makes live-blogging a cinch. And, to be honest, I'm more apt to share on Twitter or my Tumblr blog than I am on Facebook (again with those creepy old "friends" from high school). Let's hope Facebook doesn't kill these sharing capabilities (Facebook is all about sharing, remember) in order to squash competitors - or, worse yet, force us to into sharing on Facebook. If this starts happening, I may be one of the 200,000+ people turning to Instaport to save my photos upon abandoning the platform.

2.) The Facebook Threat - would Facebook really kill something it just paid $1 billion for? 
Further to #1, I surely hope not. While Instagram had been a major threat to Facebook with it's 30 million users and photo-sharing capabilities, Facebook has a lot to gain here - most notably enhanced visibility on mobile - because, let's face it, Facebook kind of sucks on mobile. Sure, enhanced capability with Timeline was an improvement, but when using my iPhone, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest have my attention before Facebook. Sorry, Zuck. Let's hope Facebook

Let's hope Facebook and Instagram can work together to grow together. Instagram now has Facebook's resources to leverage, which we can hope will only improve the site.

For further reading, check out Mashable's plea to Facebook.