Social networking giant Facebook bought one of the rising stars of the online photo-sharing world Monday by purchasing Instagram for about one billion dollars. Instagram is a fast growing iPhone app that allows users to share and manipulate their photos in creative ways. Although the company only started in 2010, it has become wildly popular in recent months. The acquisition through a combination of stock and cash was announced by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said that his company has long been focused on creating “the best experience for sharing photos.”

Zuckerberg insisted that Instagram will retain its independence and that he will not just “integrate everything into Facebook.” Users will still maintain their current ability to publish their photos on social networks other than Facebook such as Twitter and keep or acquire followers who are not on Facebook. Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom said that Facebook’s highly regarded engineering team and strong infrastructure will give Instagram the ability to “build a better Instagram for everyone.” Features from Instagram not currently available through Facebook will be built into existing Facebook products, according to Zuckerberg.

Facebook has never before made an acquisition with as many users as Instagram, and Zuckerberg said he does foresee any major purchases of that size in the future. “We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all.” Zuckerberg said but explained that he made an exception with Instagram because it was worth bringing their two companies together for the enhancement of both. The deal was by far the largest ever paid for an app, surpassing by five times last month’s acquisition by Zynga of OMGPop for $200 million.

About 250 million photos are estimated to be uploaded onto Facebook each day, and Facebook has recently improved the resolution capabilities of their photos. Many observers noted that photo sharing has become a major factor behind Facebook’s growth to their current 850 million members.

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