Instagram vs Facebook: How Zuckerberg tried to control the rivalry of the brothers and sisters

Each family has a few Drama and Meta’s has been revealed by the release of court documents in recent days.

In particular, a rivalry similar to a brother between Instagram and Facebook was preparing for years – and Mark Zuckerberg vexed.

Meta is in the middle of an antitrust test brought by the FTC, which aims to break the social media giant. The acquisition of Facebook at $ 1 billion in 2012 of Instagram plays an important role in the case of the FTC. The FTC arises that the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp have violated the American competition law.

Internal emails and other documents from 2018 to 2022 reveal how Instagram and Facebook have struggled to coexist.

In emails, Zuckerberg expressed his concerns that the photo sharing application began to “cannibalize” the Facebook application.

From Zuckerberg’s POV, Facebook led Instagram growth to the price of engagement and its own relevance, and it was time for Instagram to return the same.

That said, he also pointed out that he wanted Instagram “continued to grow, even understanding it, he would naturally cannibalize FB somewhat”.

It was clearly a delicate situation for Zuckerberg to sail.

Meta did not respond to a request for comments.

The big regret of Zuck

Several documents from 2018 show a recurring worrying subject: Instagram Pélip Facebook.

“The Facebook application has historically motivated the major part of Instagram growth via bookmarks and other links, and was born a tax on higher announcements,” said Zuckerberg in a letter to the members of the board of directors in 2018. “This contributed to a front wind for Facebook since it sends part of its commitment to Instagram.”

In May 2018, Zuckerberg wrote to several Facebook leaders in an email that “one of the main errors that I regret is not to reduce the massive inorganic distribution in Instagram”.

“If we had ceased to promote Instagram aggressively to 500 million people, for example, he would have had a sufficient scale to build and compete on stories and we would not have the same concern concerning the fragmentation of the network that we have today,” he said.

In the same e-mail, Zuckerberg asked the question: is Instagram “just a better product” than Facebook? Zuck did not think it.

“All our measures suggest that Instagram is a good product but generally less effective, and probably only grows so quickly because we have promoted it strongly,” said Zuckerberg.

Instagram had become the cooler brother and the young brother

Facebook, meanwhile, had to maintain relevance among its users as Instagram has grown.

“When you get an Amazon echo and start using it after having already used Amazon for the trade, you have the impression that Amazon becomes more relevant in your life,” Zuckerberg told the May 2018 email to managers. “However, when you get Instagram and start using this in addition to Facebook, you feel like Facebook as a business is less relevant in your life.”

Zuckerberg saw two options to improve the relevance of Facebook at the time: double the Facebook brand when users opened Instagram and WhatsApp, or completely modify the business brand.

He did both.

In 2019, he introduced an “Facebook Instagram” slogan. Then, in 2021, Facebook changed its business name to Meta platforms.

Quick advance until 2022, and the relevance of Facebook in user life was always a fight.

“Right now, IG is doing well on cultural relevance and FB is not, so I focus more on the search for a reasonable long-term path,” Zuckerberg told an e-mail to Facebook chief Tom Alison.

Try to uncide in Instagram

Throughout 2018, Zuckerberg discussed several options that could help preserve Facebook’s relevance and cultural growth in the middle of Instagram’s “cannibalization”.

Here are a few that were discussed in court documents:

1. Promote less Instagram. “Given our concern about these effects, we have reduced our Facebook promotions to Instagram,” Zuckerberg wrote to managers in May 2018.
2. Reduce Facebook’s advertising load. “There is absolutely no reason for the IG announcement burden should be less than FB at a time when … We have problems with engagement in FB,” said Zuckerberg in an electronic email wire in January 2018 with executives. “If we can clearly cook our company, then at least, we immediately balance the IG and FB ad load – this week or this month, not this year.”
3. Spinning Out Instagram has even been floated as an option. Zuckerberg wondered if Facebook “should consider the extreme step to run Instagram as a separate company,” according to the May 2018 email to the leaders. “I understand the commercial value of having Instagram and Facebook together, so I do not raise it lightly,” he said.
4. Change internal leadership with a Reorg. In 2018, there was an upheaval in the company. Chris Cox was appointed to supervise the product through the “family” of applications – Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and Messenger – and Adam Mosseri was moved from Facebook to Instagram as vice -president of the product. “The reason we are trying a new organic structure is that the status quo does not work,” said Zuckerberg. “Our applications do not work either independently or with an exchange of rational value today. Instead, we siphon the network of the Facebook application to artificially develop Instagram and Messenger.”
5. Instagram and Facebook differentiating. Zuckerberg wanted Instagram to focus more on public characters (such as influencers) and video, and remember to compete more seriously with YouTube, according to a 2018 exchange between him and Mosseri. Four years later, Zuckerberg would have a similar conversation with Alison. “The differentiation between IG and FB is important, but I think we have to find a strategy that does not allow a service to collect the remains that the other service leaves behind or to have an artificially or unreasonably compensation service,” Zuckerberg wrote in Alison in a 2022 email wire.

The drama was not only between applications

The court documents also highlighted the assembly tension between Zuckerberg and the Co -founders of Instagram, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, in the months preceding their ultimate departure from Facebook.

Zuckerberg’s May 2018 email to managers reveals concerns about the conservation of Systrom and Kreiger on Facebook.

“In our current framework for discussion where we have to walk very carefully when we discuss the possible drawbacks of the promotion of Instagram, I do not know how we will even articulate the decisions that I suggest here in Kevin,” said Zuckerberg.

Later in the email, Zuckerberg describes Systrom as “an excellent product manager who built something massively successful” and a “good team player”.

“But by the very fact that he pushes so hard for what he believes to be fair and our desire to keep it, we compromise more than we do for almost any other leader, and over time, these compromises make up to create a large imbalance in the value of flows between applications,” said Zuckerberg.

A few months later, Mosseri and Zuckerberg also discussed Systrom.

“I caught up in Kevin briefly last night, but it is difficult for me to read what is going on because the relationship is tense,” said Mosseri in a June 2018 email in Zuckerberg about Instagram priorities in June 2018. In August, Mosseri told Zuckerberg that Sytrom and Krieger “seem to have trouble having all that”.

In September, Systrom and Krieger left Instagram, Mosseri taking over as an Instagram chief.

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