Facebook bought Instagram on April 9 for roughly $1 billion, according to the “New York Times.” Instagram, a free photo-sharing network based in San Francisco, allows you to take pictures on your smartphone or iPad, add a filter to them, and share them with your friends.

Instagram gained over 35 million users in under two months, according to “Business Insider,” including Tam sophomore Zara Blackstone. “What I like about Instagram is that it’s directed only at pictures,” she said. “Usually when I go on Facebook, I’m mostly looking at other people’s pictures, so this is just way easier. I like that you can take an awesome picture and share it with the world.”

Sophomore Henna Arvind agreed. “I like Instagram because you can post and look at cool pictures, and you can’t really find that anywhere else,” she said. “I get a lot of inspiration for things I want to do by looking at other people’s pictures.”

“I don’t like that there aren’t that many effects to a lot of people’s pictures end up looking the same, ‘hipster.’ Facebook will probably add advertisements at some point because they need to make money,” said Blackstone. This is a concern echoed by many students.

A big attraction about this app was that it was free, but if Facebook decides that advertisements aren’t enough, they may start charging users. Junior Wenlock Nau said, “Facebook hasn’t done much to it yet, but we’ll have to see when the next update comes out and hopefully they won’t change anything.”

However, not all Tam students are a fan of the popular app. “Instagram is an overrated, pointless app,” said sophomore Emmanuella Zachariou. “It’s a way for people to feel like they can take good quality pictures when it takes no creativity at all. For example, you take a picture of your shoes and add some cheap filter everyone uses and everyone is thinks it’s a cool picture, when there is about tons of pictures that look the exactly same. It is completely non unique and does not make your pictures seem cool.”

According to “Business Insider,” Mark Zuckerberg posted on his blog, “This is an important milestone for Facebook because 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. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.”