Un-Like! Instagram: 1 Year Later, $0 in the Bank

A pictureâ??s worth much more than a thousand words to Facebook. Last April â?? a year ago today, in fact â?? the social media giant agreed to buy the quickly growing photo-sharing social network Instagram for a cool $1 billion (the final price, a mixture of cash and stock, was $715 million because Facebook shares tumbled before the deal was finalized). The sky-high purchase price, well above Instagramâ??s $500 million valuation at the time, led some to wonder if Facebook was helping to fuel another tech bubble. A year later, the juryâ??s still out on whether Instagram will one day reap huge profits, but the company is laying groundwork to put the monetization machine in motion.