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By BARBARA ORTUTAY

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Associated Press

NEW YORK — Poor Instagram users.

First, their beloved photo-sharing application moves from iPhone-only exclusivity to the Android phone masses. A week later, Facebook swallows up the tiny startup behind the app for $1 billion. The purchase sparked worries that Facebook might shutter Instagram or change it for the worse by harvesting their personal information or shoving ads into their carefully curated photo streams.

“I’ve tried very hard not to be part of the Facebook ecosystem,” says Darwin Poblete, a Brooklyn, New York-based architect who has used Instagram since its early days. “Now I feel like the purchase has sucked me in. I’ll have to see how the privacy settings change to decide if I will leave it.”

Instagram has attracted more than 31 million users in less than two years. Its near-cult-like early followers were loyal iPhone users who flocked to the app for its ease-of-use, its playful filters that can make even boring photos look artistic, and its lack of ads, status updates and other clutter. Apple named Instagram the iPhone App of the Year in 2011.

To be fair, both Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram CEO Kevin Systorm sought to reassure people that the app is here to stay. Unlike all the other startups Facebook has bought, Instagram will remain available to people who don’t use Facebook or don’t want to connect it to their accounts on the world’s most populous online social network, the CEOs said.

“Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people,” Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page announcing the purchase on Monday.

It’s hard to say, though, what Facebook might do a year or two from now. After all, its site’s constant evolution has been a big reason for its success. Doing things the old way just because a few users complain isn’t the Facebook way.

For Samantha Hutmacher, change isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The college student, who uses both Facebook and Instagram, says that if Facebook tweaks the app, “I assume it’ll be more creative.”

Hutmacher says she “can’t pinpoint any particular time” when she wished that her Facebook page didn’t have the new features the company has added over the years.

“It kind of grows on you,” says Hutmacher, who studies elementary school education at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Mo.