[T]hreats – Instagram
Looking at Instagram’s rapidly growing user base, and the thought of all that falling into the hands of competitors such as Twitter or Google+, may have given Zuckerberg sleepless nights.
He would have known that Twitter’s overtures to Instagram had been rebuffed by Systrom, so some comfort there. But Google may have been the real cause for worry. With Instagram’s super-hit Android launch, Google could be eyeing it with the intention of dovetailing it into its Google+ social networking service. This would be anathema to Zuckerberg, and could possibly explain the deal taking place so soon after the Android debut, the hush-hush manner of its consummation and the ‘can’t-take-no’ price. Google was likely taken unawares by the swift move.
But what is it with photos? Zuckerberg knew that Instagram’s photo app could be the launching pad, the so-called thin edge of the wedge that a competitor could use to prize open and call to question Facebook’s overwhelming supremacy in social networking media, built to a huge extent on photos users share with each other.
Zuckerberg is all for innovation, disruptive or otherwise, except he probably doesn’t like it eyeballing him across the ring. There really was no alternative to buying Instagram – the risks, otherwise, were too great.
And don’t forget the IPO and its $75 billion – $100 billion stake. A competitor with Instagram in its bag could go to town with an “I am Facebook’s comeuppance” message and maybe roil sentiments ahead of the issue. Far better to safeguard the IPO on the one hand and to bask in the glory and buzz of a billion dollar buyout on the other!