- As Facebook considered acquiring Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg also had his eye on Path, a social media platform he saw as potentially disruptive to Facebook. Old emails revealed during Meta’s landmark antitrust case have shed light on how Zuckerberg accessed Facebook’s old rivals.
Before Mark Zuckerberg acquired Instagram, he was also deeply worried about a now defunct social media platform, Path.
Founded in 2010, Path was seen as a direct challenger to Facebook throughout its eight-year run.
The platform, created by Dave Morin, a former product manager at Facebook, and Napster alumni Shawn Fanning and Dustin Mierau, aimed to create a more intimate alternative to Facebook.
Unlike with its more established rival, Path users could only have 50 friends, and this cap was later raised to 150, then 500.
At its peak, the app boasted around 50 million users and was valued at half a billion dollars. Google also made a $100 million bid for the app when it was just months old.
According to recent emails revealed in Meta’s landmark antitrust case, Zuckerberg was preoccupied with both Path and Instagram before he acquired the image-sharing platform in April 2012.
In a February 2012 message, Zuckerberg wrote to Facebook’s former chief financial officer that Instagram and Path already had created meaningful networks that could be “very disruptive to us.”
“I’m getting a bit more worried about Path,” Zuckerberg wrote at the time. “Out of all the new social startups, they’re the only one that goes right to the core of what we’re trying to do around identifying and friends sharing.”
“Theoretically, we could survive FourSquare, Quora, Dropbox, Instagram, etc growing quite a bit, but if Path grows and isn’t deeply wired into Facebook then that would be a big problem for us,” he wrote, adding that Instagram was “probably next on the list.”
Later that year, Facebook ultimately ended up acquiring Instagram for $1 billion.
Representatives for Meta did not immediately respond to Fortune‘s request for comment, which was made outside normal working hours.
Meta is facing a historic antitrust case
Zuckerberg has been trying to argue in court that Meta did not consider Instagram a rival but rather “more adjacent” to what Facebook was already doing.
He said on Wednesday that he viewed Path and Google+, another now defunct social network, as Facebook’s “direct competitors.”
However, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is arguing that Zuckerberg acquired Instagram and later WhatsApp to squash competition and establish an illegal monopoly in the social media market.
The attorney leading the antitrust case from the FTC, Daniel Matheson, pointed out on Tuesday that Zuckerberg had referred to trying to neutralize a competitor by buying Instagram, which he also previously called a “rapidly growing, threatening, network.”
Other emails released as part of the trial revealed that the Meta CEO once considered separating Instagram from Facebook over concerns about antitrust litigation.
What is at stake for Meta in this case?
The stakes for Meta are high: If the tech giant loses the case, it could be forced to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp. A forced divestiture of Instagram alone could slash the company’s advertising revenues by as much as 50%.
Meta has previously said that the competitive landscape has shifted dramatically and that it now contends with a host of social media rivals, including TikTok, YouTube, iMessage, and more.
“The evidence at trial will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others. More than 10 years after the FTC reviewed and cleared our acquisitions, the Commission’s action in this case sends the message that no deal is ever truly final. Regulators should be supporting American innovation, rather than seeking to break up a great American company and further advantaging China on critical issues like AI,” the company said in an earlier statement.
