What Mark Zuckerberg Really Thought About Instagram Before Buying It

Summary: Thanks to evidence revealed by the FTC in the antitrust trial against Meta, we get a glimpse into what Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook execs thought about Instagram before they bought it.

It’s obvious that Meta knew about Instagram’s potential. That’s why Meta snapped up the company for a cool $1 billion in 2012. Why else would it buy Instagram, right? However, leading up to the acquisition, Mark Zuckerberg had a very different view of Instagram. Thanks to Meta’s ongoing antitrust lawsuit, the FTC introduced some juicy evidence that revealed Zuckerberg’s thoughts on Instagram before Meta bought it.

Mark Zuckerberg’s views on Instagram

In February 2011, Zuckerberg flagged Instagram’s rapid growth. “Instagram seems like it’s growing quickly. In 4 months they’re up to 2m users and 30k daily photo uploads. That’s a lot. We need to track this closely.”

Zuckerberg was also concerned that Instagram’s growth could attract competitors who might want to buy the company, such as Google. He noted that if this happened, it could be a “real issue for us.”

He said, “They’re growing extremely quickly right now. It seems like they double every couple of months or so, and their base is already ~5-10m users. As soon as we launch a compelling product a lot of people will use ours more and future Instagram users will find no reason to use them. But at the current rate, literally every couple of months that we waste translates to a double in their growth and a harder position for us to work our way out of.”

So much so that it seems that Zuckerberg and his team thought about buying Instagram. Zuckerberg initially floated the idea of spending $500 million. But as we all know, Meta ended up paying $1 billion for the app. The CEO also provided the FTC with some damning evidence that its interest in Instagram was more about eliminating competition.

In one of his messages, Zuckerberg said, “I think what we’d do is keep their product running and just not add more features to it, and focus future development on our products, including building all of their camera features into ours. By not killing their products we prevent everyone from hating us and we make sure we don’t immediately create a hole in the market for someone else to fill, but all future development would go towards our core products.”

Meta’s antitrust trial

Right now, Meta now faces a trial over its Instagram acquisition. Regulators are arguing that Meta’s acquisition of platforms such as WhatsApp and Instagram was more about eliminating threats than innovation. It wouldn’t be the last time Zuckerberg tried that playbook. He also attempted to acquire Snapchat. He also later admitted that TikTok seriously slowed Meta’s growth.