In an internal email appeared as part of the Meta Antitrust trial, Meta Zuckerberg General Director was concerned about the potential that the company’s buying on Instagram could can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can can canish Facebook. If that happened, this could lead to “the collapse of the more attractive and lucrative product network,” a Zuckerberg was concerned about other flaws in a confidential message.
Zuckerberg proposed numerous ways to prevent this cannibalization from occurring, including building more bridges between meta applications to make them function as a single network (suggesting that Instagram was contributing to the loss of Facebook’s cultural importance). He also wondered if Facebook would be better served by rotating Instagram as a special business.
In his trial against Meta, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is trying to prove that the company is operating a social network monopoly and that its acquisition of competitive applications like Instagram and WhatsApp allowed it to maintain its prevailing market position. As evidence, the prosecution is showing email and other messages showing that Zuckerberg understood the threat that Instagram posed on Facebook, even after becoming a part of the biggest family of meta.
In an email dated May 2018, Zuckerberg explained to other Facebook executives -including leading product official Meta Chris Cox, now former -Co Sheryl Sandberg, former -Cto Mike Schroepfer, former Growth Main Officer (now COO) Javier Olivan, and former -cfo David Wehner -that he was worried about her friend’s company. her were not correct.
Instagram damaged Facebook growth
Specifically, Zuckerberg was concerned that raising Instagram could hurt Facebook itself, saying internal data show that when users joined Instagram, their Facebook engagement “falls significantly”.
“We have begun to receive more data suggesting this emptiness from the compounds of Facebook use as a larger percentage of the population gets on Instagram,” Zuckerberg wrote in a piece of email entitled “Cannibalization and Network Collap”.
The more the company pushed Instagram growth, the greater the threat that Instagram posed on Facebook, Zuckerberg seemed to end.
“This raises the issue that our models for the future may be wrong,” Zuckerberg continued. “We currently expect both Facebook and Instagram to be able to grow, but it seems likely to be the case if we promote Instagram is about the same size as Facebook, which will have significant negative effects on Facebook that we are not currently modeling,” he wrote. “That is, the Facebook network is likely to maintain reduced engagement between some of its members, but if the commitment between all its population is empty, it can lead to significantly worse results than we currently expect,” Zuckerberg said.
He also said Instagram growth was mainly being directed by the Facebook app and its use of Facebook Friend graph.
“What it suggests is that as we hope to grow two products, there is a real chance that we can cause the product’s collapse more attractive and profitable to replace it with what is less attractive and less profitable,” Zuckerberg said.
As a result, he said Facebook was reducing his promotions on Instagram and that Instagram should introduce new integrations that would run the balance towards Facebook in the country. He explained that he wanted the bridges to be built between the two networks, so the applications “increasingly function as a single network in many respects”.
As an example, Zuckerberg emphasized that it should be easier for large audience video creators to be more easily included in both applications. Plus, he wanted to combine sound and video calling networks on WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram to become a single network. (Meta eventually introduced inter-platform messages in 2020, before rolling it years later.)
Family’s family strategy versus a spin-out
In particular, Zuckerberg also called for the difficulties of building new products and services within Instagram and WhatsApp because of their “founding leadership”.
He mourned that management could not openly discuss his concerns about Instagram in particular, as he could demoralize the team and prevent the company from maintaining Instagram co -founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger.
He also pushed the company to rethink its product brand so that the Facebook brand could remain money and centers.
“When you open those apps, it would say” Instagram from Facebook “and” WhatsApp from Facebook “,” Zuckerberg proposed in his email. “We may even need to place Facebook brand on the chrome of those applications where app names and logos are today to cement this relationship in people’s minds.”
Zuckerberg pushed Meta to rethink her brand so that Facebook could remain ahead and the center.
In 2021, Facebook instead of this re -adhered as Meta, whose logo now appears in all company applications.
If FTC wins its issue, Meta may have to rotate Instagram and WhatsApp as separate businesses. Ironically, this is something Zuckerberg himself suggested in his 2018 email as an alternative strategy – and perhaps the “single structure” to meet the company’s goals. Instagram rotation can maintain Facebook growth, concentrate the drawback teams and allow the company to hold Systrom, Zuckerberg wrote. (Instagram founders left later that year, in September 2018.)
After all, Meta chose not to rotate her purchases. But Zuckerberg had announced other executions in the email that there is a “non-trivial chance” that Meta could be forced to rotate Instagram and WhatsApp in the next 5-10 years, making all her work by building a family of apps “something we don’t get to keep”.
If FTC reaches court, Zuckerberg will be proven right.
Meta minimized the size of these electronic posts in a statement shared with Techcrunch.
“Outside context and one -year -old documents regarding purchases that were revised by the FTC more than a decade ago will not obscure the realities of competition we face or overcome the weak issue of the FTC,” said a Meta spokesman.
