Nine years after the deal: why did Facebook buy Instagram?

Facebook and Instagram are two of the most popular social networks today. An important moment in the history of both was Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram on April 9, 2012, exactly nine years ago.

That important transaction was carried out for $1 billion in cash and stock, according to the company led by Mark Zuckerberg.

“We will work with Facebook to evolve Instagram and build the network. We will continue to add new features to the product and look for new ways to create an ever-better mobile photo experience,” said Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s president at the time.

Zuckerberg himself explained that the purchase was made because he was looking to improve the user experience so that users could share photos with friends and family.

However, the regulators were always on the lookout for what could have been the real motivations for the million-dollar acquisition.

At the time, sources inside Snapchat revealed that Facebook had also lobbied to buy them along with Instagram and WhatsApp.

Furthermore, in an article published by CNBC, a group of former Facebook employees -who belonged to the platform when the purchase was made- pointed out that the company acquired the social network as part of a strategy to defend itself from the “fierce threat” that Twitter’s acquisition of Instagram could have posed.

For context, it is worth remembering that in 2012 Facebook saw Twitter as its main competitor, although this platform had a smaller number of followers (100 million versus Facebook’s 845 million).

The former employees also revealed that part of the strategy consisted of improving mobile applications, as these were slow and speeding up their operation was a way to ensure future growth.

A year earlier, in 2011, the company had launched Messenger, which still failed to take off. Then the developers started working on a photo app, just when they stopped to think about Instagram.

Thus, on April 6, 2012, Twitter offered $500 million to buy Instagram, so Facebook was forced to double down. Although neither of the two applications was a real threat on its own, the combination of the two could pose a risk for the company led by Zuckerberg.

In the end, the risky (and costly) bet turned out to be the best for the company, and today both networks enjoy a wide prominence on the scene of the different social platforms.