Facebook cynics seeking emergency exits at Instagram?

A couple of days ago, we reported on news that Facebook has agreed to purchase photo sharing app-maker Instagram for the staggering sum of one billion dollars. While the news has been welcomed by many--not least of them being Instagram's dozen-or-so employees, we'd imagine--a not-insignificant section of the community has reacted with alarm. With Facebook having become so dominant in its space, we tend to forget that there's still a sizable section of the population who've still avoided signing up, often citing the social networking giant's past and current privacy issues.

Although both companies have pledged that a Facebook account won't be required to use Instagram, and that the service will continue to work with rival social networks, some Instagram users continue to voice concerns. Thankfully, there are alternatives out there, if you count yourself among that number.

A couple of articles guiding Instagram users to the emergency exits have caught our eye since Monday's announcement. A tipoff from freelance journalist Theano Nikitas took us to Gizmodo's pessimistically-titled article 'How to Export Your Instagram Photos Before Facebook Ruins Everything', which tips its hat to the free service Instaport, providing a simple way to back up all your Instagram photos in a single zip archive. Our friends over at Steve's Digicams share this recommendation, and also point Mac users to InstaBackup, a new app created by concerned Instagram user David Smith that performs much the same backup task. VentureBeat, meanwhile, offers up a selection of Instagram substitutes, in its article '5 alternatives to Instagram for Facebook haters'.

Whether you're planning to stay with Instagram or not, some other articles offer interesting reading on the topic of just why Facebook was willing to part with so much cash to snap up the photo app-maker. (Based on estimates of Instagram's total userbase at the time of the announcement, Facebook is paying almost US$30 per current Instagram user, a significant portion of whom will already be users of the company's own site.) Of particular interest are the Washington Post's 'Why Facebook bought Instagram: It’s all about the photos and user engagement', and the Christian Science Monitor's 'Instagram gives Facebook 5 million reasons to love recent acquisition'.