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Facebook Buys Instagram: Time to Uninstall?

(In this photo illustration, the photo-sharing app Instagram fan page is seen on the Facebook website on the Apple Safari web browser on April 9, 2012 in New York City.)

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Instagram has had quite a big week.

First the photo-sharing service was released to hordes of snap-happy Android users, after years as an iOS-only service. And now the 25-million-account mobile giant will be swallowed by an even bigger social media fish: Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg’s company has reportedly forked over $1 billion to buy Instagram, though unlike some other big purchases the company head says the photo sharing service will stay relatively independent.

One concern for current Instagram users is what will happen to their data; when a user takes a photo with the app, information about location, for instance, can be passed on to that user’s followers. There is no guarantee that Facebook will mine Instagram’s data, but it could happen—especially if Facebook deems the information to be valuable.

So unless you’re big on sharing, it might be time to backup those hipster snapshots and consider trading in that application for an old fashioned Polaroid.

Video produced by Krishnan Vasuvedan.