Zuckerberg Believed Instagram Was a Threat to Facebook’s Growth

It’s been more than a decade since Kevin Systrom sold Instagram to Facebook, but the memories remain.

Fast-growing Instagram had ballooned to one billion users — 40% of Facebook’s size — but had just 1,000 employees, compared to Facebook’s 35,000. I Photo: Mark Zuckerberg Facebook

After the acquisition, “Mark Zuckerberg was not investing in Instagram because he believed we were a threat to their growth,” Systrom said, Andrew Nusca reported for Fortune Tech.

The Instagram co-founder gave more than six hours of testimony in the federal antitrust trial that has ensnared the company now known as Meta.

Systrom’s perspective, which contradicts Meta’s defense, supports the U.S. government’s case that Meta bought Instagram in 2012 to neutralize a competing social media service. Last week, Zuckerberg testified that Meta invested heavily in Instagram after the deal.

Yet Systrom said he left the company in 2018 due to a distinct lack of investment in the platform.

Fast-growing Instagram had ballooned to one billion users — 40% of Facebook’s size — but had just 1,000 employees, compared to Facebook’s 35,000, Systrom said. “He felt a lot of emotion around which one was better, meaning Instagram or Facebook,” Systrom said of Meta’s CEO.

“And I think there were real human emotional things going on there.”