Now that the UK’s Office of Fair Trading and the US Federal Trade Commission are happy with things, it looks like Facebook is buying Instagram. For real. Well, there’s one more hoop to jump through, and that is a “fairness hearing” set to take place next week at the California Department of Corporations in San Francisco.

So barring any huge skeletons lurking in the closet that the OFT and FTC somehow managed to miss, it all seems likes a done deal. However, what will happen once Facebook owns Instagram? When news of the proposed purchase first broke in April, Instagram devotees were up in arms at the idea, fearful that Zuckerberg’s company would ruin the photo app by forcing all users to post everything through Facebook. At the time there was a detectable sentiment on the likes of Twitter that people were going to grab their lens caps and quit in a frenzy of deleting Instagram accounts.

Is this still the overriding mentality of die-hard Instagram users who aren’t on Facebook? Hard to tell. But you can be sure that there will be at least some individuals who can’t stand the thought of their favourite app being owned by Big Blue II, and will leave Instagram. To those users, we’d say: “hold it”.

If you are dead-set on leaving Instagram, make sure you back up all of your content before you do so. SocialSafe allows users to back up Instagram photos, comments, tags, likes and followers/following to your own PC or Mac, keeping your memories safe forever. To see just how easy it is to back up your Instagram shots with SocialSafe, watch this video: