Instagram would have succeeded without Facebook’s $1B takeover, co-founder testifies

Instagram would have been successful even if Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had never purchased the photo-sharing app for $1 billion in 2012, co-founder Kevin Systrom said during the FTC’s landmark antitrust trial on Tuesday.

Systrom, who was called to the stand by the FTC, testified that Instagram was experiencing explosive user growth prior to Zuckerberg’s acquisition offer. The 41-year-old also said he was confident Instagram could have eventually rolled out features like video and private messages without Facebook’s help.

As Instagram grew, Systrom testified that Zuckerberg began to treat the app’s success as a “threat” to Facebook. In one instance, Instagram did not receive any new headcount to improve its data privacy practices despite a companywide effort to do so after the Cambridge Analytics scandal.

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“I thought that that was not appropriate given the scale of Instagram,” Systrom said, according to Bloomberg.

The testimony lent support to the FTC’s core claim that Meta used a “buy or bury” strategy to stop upstart apps like Instagram and WhatsApp before they could directly threaten its social media empire. The agency has asked the court to force Meta to spin off the apps.

In a 2017 email shown in court, Systrom grumbled to a colleague that Instagram hadn’t received additional employees despite a companywide push to expand video offerings.

In another emailed, Systrom complained to Facebook’s ex-chief technology officer that Instagram had areas that were “starving for investment.”

“I was working very hard for the company to make this a success and not getting resources back,” Systrom said on the stand. “It was in stark contrast to the effort I was putting in.”

Systrom continued to lead Instagram after the acquisition and remained as its CEO until his resignation in 2018. At the time, he said simply that he and co-founder Mike Krieger, who also departed, were “now ready for our next chapter.”

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The Post reached out to Meta for comment on Systrom’s testimony.

Earlier in the trial, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had argued that Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram had helped rather than hurt its growth – and asserted that its explosion in popularity may never have happened without his support.

Meta’s chief legal officer Jennifer Newstead also made that case in a blog post earlier this month ahead of the trial.

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“When we acquired Instagram, it had about 2% of the users it has today, just 13 employees, no revenue, and virtually no infrastructure of its own,” Newstead said. “Many of the features that are now central to the Instagram community – direct messaging, live video streaming, shopping, and stories – were built on Meta’s core technology infrastructure after the acquisition.”

As The Post has reported, Zuckerberg’s past emails regarding the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions were featured heavily in the FTC’s opening argument, as well as the billionaire’s three-day appearance in court.

“Messenger isn’t beating WhatsApp, Instagram was growing so much faster than us that we had to buy them for $1 billion,” Zuckerberg said in one November 2012 email to then-Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.