Instagram officially part of Facebook today: 5B photos shared, 80M users

The FTC says it’s OK. The California Department of Corporations agreed, after a fairness hearing. And Facebook laid out the welcome mat. So the “billion-dollar” transaction that has since become a $741 million deal — due to Facebook’s stock price collapse — is now final.

Facebook has reiterated that Instagram will continue to serve its community, which would appear to indicate a hands-off, keep-doing-what-you’re-doing approach, but says that access to Facebook’s “strong engineering team and infrastructure” will help the photo-sharing app continue to grow.

And grow it will, if it continues its current trajectory.

ComScore just reported that Instagram’s website is now the 56th most popular site in the U.S., with 22.7 million monthly unique visitors. That’s up from 16.5 million in just one month. And Instagram passed the 80 million user mark in July, a growth of 50 million from just April of this year. That’s sensational growth by any measure.

In a statement, an Instagram representative said that the team would be moving to Facebook’s headquarters but that “Instagram isn’t going anywhere. The Instagram app and its features will stay the same one you know and love, and we’ll keep working together to build a better Instagram for everyone.”

Facebook VP of engineering Mike Schroepfer reiterated Facebook’s eagerness to work with Instagram, but added this somewhat ambiguous statement:

“We also can’t wait to work with the talented Instagram team to improve the mobile experience.”

Is he speaking about Instagram’s mobile experience, or Facebook’s — or the generic mobile experience that consumers, well, experience? Hopefully, he means Facebook’s … which, in spite of a recent iOS update, is still not regarded as amazingly amazing.

Instagram’s mobile experience is generally regarded as one of the best in the business — and users seem to agree.

photo credit: gogoloopie via photo pin cc