Instagram would have been successful even if Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had never bought the photo sharing application for $ 1 billion in 2012, said co-founder Kevin Systrom during the FTC trial on Tuesday.
Systrom, who was summoned by FTC, proved that Instagram was experiencing explosive user growth before Zuckerberg’s purchase offer. The 41-year-old also said he was sure that Instagram could have finally shared features like videos and private messages without the help of Facebook.
As Instagram grew, Systrom proved that Zuckerberg began treating the success of the app as a “threat” to Facebook. On one occasion, Instagram did not receive any new accounts to improve his data intimacy practices, despite an effort throughout the company to do so after Cambridge Analytics scandal.
“I thought this was not appropriate given the instagram scale,” Systrom said, according to Bloomberg.
The testimony gave support to the essential claim of the FTC that Meta used a “buy or bury” strategy to stop applications at Upsart as Instagram and WhatsApp before they could directly threaten its social media empire. The agency has asked the court to force Meta to rotate applications.
In a 2017 email indicated in court, Systrom collided with a colleague who had not received additional employees despite an impetus across the society to expand video offers.
In another by email, Systrom complained to the former Facebook technology official that Instagram had areas that were “hungry for investment”.
“I was working hard for the company to make this success and not return resources,” Systrom said in the stand. “It was in fierce contrast with the effort I was setting.”
Systrom continued to run Instagram after the purchase and remained as her CEO until his resignation in 2018. At the time, he simply said that he and co -founder Mike Creator, who also left, were “now ready for our next chapter”.
The post arrived at Meta to comment on the testimony of Systrom.
Earlier in court, Meta General Director Mark Zuckerberg had argued that buying Facebook on Instagram had helped instead of damaging his growth – and claimed that his explosion in popularity may never have happened without his support.
Meta’s leading legal official Jennifer Newstead also made that issue in a blog post earlier this month before the trial.
“When we earn Instagram, it had about 2% of the users it has today, only 13 employees, without income and virtually no infrastructure of its own,” Newstead said. “Many of the features that are now essential to the community on Instagram – live messages, direct video broadcasting, shopping and history – were built into the essential Meta technology infrastructure.”
As the post reported, Zuckerberg’s past emails about Instagram purchases and WhatsApp were presented much at the FTC opening argument as well as the billionaire’s three-day appearance in court.
“Messenger is not beating WhatsApp, Instagram is growing much faster than we had to buy them for $ 1 billion,” Zuckerberg said in an email in November 2012 to fazing Coo Sheryl Sandberg.
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