Facebook has grown over the last 1 decade in terms of the number of active users, how the platform functions and the acquisition of popular apps. The Facebook you knew in 2008 for example is no more and now it wants to be the Internet for billions of people out there.
One of their popular acquisitions was their $1 billion acquisition of Instagram in 2012. This was big since it was an incredibly popular app where people share photos with filters and at that time, it was only available in iOS. 4 years later, the app has become a force to be reckoned with, where it has over 400 million active users which has attracted over 200,000 advertisers and is a cash cow for Facebook.
Since Instagram is part of Facebook, it is bound to be integrated into the mother-ship’s ecosystem and it started with sharing of advertisers, then the easy login via your Facebook app. Now, you can actually login to your Instagram account right within the Facebook app.
When you click on the hamburger menu on the far right on the Facebook app, you are usually greeted with a lot of options like the one showed above. Under “favourites”, you can see that Instagram has been integrated just above Facebook Moments which is another Facebook app that organizes your photos using AI.
When you tap on the Instagram section (which weirdly does not have the the updated icon), it takes you straight to your Instagram timeline hassle free which is cool. Also, it displays a counter, which seems to be the number of Facebook friends you have on Instagram. However, it is an easy addition to access Instagram easily while browsing on Facebook and maybe in the future, they may integrate another popular Facebook owned app: WhatsApp.
