The first week of the Meta Antitrust trial brought new revelation about how the company, previously known as Facebook, approached the competitive threat posed by Instagram in the early 2010s.
The US government has accused Meta of violating competition laws by acquiring companies such as Instagram and WhatsApp that threatened its Facebook monopoly. If a U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lawyer is successful, the government can disband Meta by selling Instagram and WhatsApp.
As part of the trial, the FTC shared compelling evidence to demonstrate that, as Facebook's photo sharing apps were becoming more popular, they were very aware of the risks that Instagram had created for their business. In a document that includes Facebook's internal email, Facebook executives will discuss how much they will pay for the app, regarding Instagram growth, if Facebook gets it.
Company executives will also discuss other strategies to limit Instagram growth. This means no longer adding new features while working on your own products, such as copying that feature, releasing your own app, or purchasing your app.
According to government debates, Facebook's strategy to buy or fill in competition is on display in these conversations. In addition to showing how the company was thinking about competition at the time, the message cites the fierce throat strategy that allowed the Meta to become the social networking giant that is what it is today.
Some of the highlights of these messages can be found below:
Mark Zuckerberg and others are worried about the rapid growth of Instagram
“Instagram appears to be growing rapidly. There are up to 2 million users in four months and 30k photo uploads every day. This is very close. You need to track this closely. And the next big push for Dropbox will be photo sharing.” – February 2011, Mark Zuckerberg “If Instagram keeps kicking ass on mobile, or if Google buys for the next few years, they can easily add fragments of services that copy what we're doing now. Using more of ours and future Instagram users won't find a reason to use them, but literally every few months, we'll double in their growth and we'll be in a difficult position for us to get out.” – September 2011, Mark Zuckerberg, “The Photo Team is taking off Instagram's simple photo sharing app, so it's pretty much focused on the new mobile photo app (and even my app is seeing fat growth… Mobile uploads increase to 17.7m days, +5.3 w/w). Garden.” – Chris Cox, Chief Product Officer in February 2011, “One trend is that a huge number of people use Instagram every day. Including everyone from technical high school friends to FB employees – Just upload a portion of the photo to FB. – Mark Zuckerberg, February 2012
Facebook considers buying Instagram and stops its development and growth
“I wonder if we should consider buying Instagram, even if it takes 500m. For now, it looks like there are two things we don't have. It's a really good camera and a photo-centric sharing network.” – Mark Zuckerberg, February 2012 “I think it's pretty possible that our first paper was wrong and theirs was right. That's what people hope to get the best photos than they'll put on FB. – Mark Zuckerberg, February 2012 “I think there's a serious argument that we need to buy Pass, Pinterest, Instagram, Evernote, etc. on our platform.” – Samuel W. Lessin (previously Facebook) VP's products) “It's about keeping the product running, not adding features, and not focusing on all cameras. – Mark Zuckerberg, February 2012. “One way to see this is that it's time for us to really buy. Even if new competitors spring up, when you buy Instagram, Path, Foursquare, etc., everyone can get closer to scale again, it's over a year.” – Mark Zuckerberg, February 2012.