Multibillion-dollar acquisitions may be par for the course for tech stars like Google and Apple, but they have been nearly nonexistent for social-media giant Facebook. As CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote announcing the $1 billion deal to purchase photo-sharing app Instagram, “It’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all.” So what was so special about Instagram? Zuckerberg knew two things for sure: users will increasingly interact with social media through mobile devices, and in the near term, his social network’s future lies in photo sharing. Whether it’s shots of the eggs Benedict you just had for brunch or pictures of your summer jaunt to Barcelona, photography has become the medium in social media. At the time of the acquisition, Instagram had a passionate user base of 30 million, and that’s before it launched an app for Android phones. With Instagram’s achieving such adoration from its fans, Zuckerberg saw the $1 billion as a small price to pay to add the company to the Facebook fold while eliminating a potential rival.