Latest news with #FacebookCamera
The National
23-04-2025
- Business
- The National
Facebook Camera failure: Trial zooms in on Meta's challenge to Instagram
Mark Zuckerberg once criticised Facebook Camera, the company's app designed to compete with Instagram, as being so underwhelming that it might actually drive more users to Instagram, a former product manager has said in court. The Federal Trade Commission has taken Mr Zuckerberg's social media company Meta to court over accusations of anti-competitive behaviour. The government used emails from more than a decade ago during the trial on Wednesday to demonstrate Meta's intensifying efforts to take on Instagram, which was growing in popularity at the time. 'We need more than eight filters … and we need to make sure the filters are of high quality,' Mr Zuckerberg's email to Dirk Stoop read, referring to the photo filters that made Instagram so popular. There was also a high level of criticism of bugs and underwhelming features compared to those of Instagram, Mr Stoop revealed. The Meta Camera app was announced in April 2012 and but struggled to gain popularity after being made available on Apple's iPhone platform. It was never released for Android. Another internal document presented by the FTC showed correspondence from Mr Stoop in which he said "sharing photos from our mobile apps wasn't fun or fast" compared to Instagram. According to an internal email shown in court, Meta sought to avoid publicly comparing the Camera app to Instagram's and also insisted on avoiding phrases such as "Facebook squashes the competition". Ultimately, Camera continued to plod along but efforts to improve it were dwarfed by Meta's purchase of Instagram in 2012 for about $1 billion. In May 2014, Meta withdrew Camera from the iPhone App store. During cross-examination, Meta's lawyers sought to prove the Camera app offered several innovations and was not merely an imitation of Instagram. Mr Stoop was asked about the multiphoto picker tool, which he said was unique at the time of the app's introduction. He also said he saw the audiences for Instagram and Cameras as being completely different. 'I saw Instagram as a place for creative photography,' he said. 'That's not necessarily how people were using Facebook or Camera.' Mr Stoop was the latest to be called to the stand in Washington District Court by the FTC. On Tuesday, Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram, took the stand and described to the FTC the various ways that Meta had sought to put the kibosh on Instagram's success shortly after acquiring the company. Meta's lawyers, in turn, brought up Mr Systrom's public comments made shortly after Meta's purchase of Instagram, in which he praised the resources the social media giant provided to his company. Mr Zuckerberg, founder and chief executive of Meta, was called to the witness stand during the trial's opening days, followed by former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. One of the concerns surrounding Meta as a result of the trial is that the resources and energy spent to prepare for litigation might be syphoning valuable resources the company needs to innovate. Yet Meta's recent output, particularly the release of its much anticipated Edits video app, has suggested such fears have not been realised. It might be too soon to tell if Meta's productivity on the business and technology side is being adversely affected. During Microsoft's battle with US regulators from 1997 to 2001, the company appeared to be largely unaffected in terms of productivity and output but officials later blamed the lengthy trial, along with paranoia stemming from the trial, for the cautious decisions that might have stifled innovation. The current trial ultimately comes down to innovation, with the FTC alleging that instead of competing through its own ideas, Meta sought to buy out competitors, which limited consumer choice. Wednesday's evidence was given after Meta and Apple were hit with an $800 million fine from the European Commission for breaching competition rules. Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, issued a statement within hours of the fine being issued for breaching the commission's Digital Markets Act. 'The European Commission is attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards,' he said. 'This isn't just about a fine – the commission forcing us to change our business model effectively imposes a multibillion-dollar tariff on Meta while requiring us to offer an inferior service. And by unfairly restricting personalised advertising, the European Commission is also hurting European businesses and economies.' Meta might now be required to divest from Instagram and WhatsApp, which it also purchased. Now in its second week and expected to take at least two months, the trial continues.
CNN
16-04-2025
- Business
- CNN
Spinning off Instagram, the decline of ‘friending' and other takeaways from Mark Zuckerberg at the FTC monopoly trial
CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended Meta's acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp on the stand this week during the start of trial over the blockbuster antitrust lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission. But, it turns out, Zuckerberg predicted that he might find himself in this position years ago – and even proposed the idea of spinning off Instagram himself. That was one of several takeaways from more than 10 hours of testimony from Meta's CEO, during which he pushed back on the FTC's claims that the company has built an illegal 'social network monopoly' by acquiring would-be rivals. The testimony painted a picture of how Zuckerberg views the competition and the company's struggles to keep up with a rapidly evolving social media landscape that it argues has pushed users toward rivals like TikTok and YouTube. There's a lot at stake for Meta, as it could be forced to offload Instagram and WhatsApp if it loses. Here are the biggest takeaways from Zuckerberg, who took the stand just before former Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg testified on Wednesday. In 2018, Zuckerberg raised concerns to other executives that 'as calls to break up the big tech companies grow, there is a non-trivial chance that we will be forced to spin out Instagram and perhaps WhatsApp in the next 5-10 years anyway,' according to an email produced in court. In light of that, Zuckerberg suggested spinning off Instagram because the company's 'family of apps' structure could hurt Facebook. He added: 'most companies actually perform better after they've been split up.' Of course, Meta didn't end up spinning Instagram or WhatsApp off, and it's now in court fighting the FTC to avoid having to do just that. Zuckerberg was indeed concerned that WhatsApp and Instagram could threaten Facebook's dominance prior to buying the platforms, documents presented during FTC lawyer Daniel Matheson's questioning suggested. In 2011, Zuckerberg appeared to realize that Facebook's now-defunct Facebook Camera service was falling behind Instagram in functionality and popularity. 'In the time it has taken us to get our act together on this, Instagram has become a large and viable competitor to us on mobile photos, which will increasingly be the future of photos,' Zuckerberg wrote in an email at the time. Facebook ended up acquiring Instagram for $1 billion in April 2012. In a 2012 email to then-COO Sandberg, Zuckerberg said then-Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer's teams 'are executing well technically but their results this year are only okay so far.' 'Messenger isn't beating WhatsApp, Instagram was growing so much faster than us that we had to buy them for $1 billion,' he wrote in the email. 'That's not exactly killing it.' Then in 2013, Zuckerberg told then-growth head Javier Olivan he worried that WhatsApp would develop features similar to Facebook and Instagram and could 'start winning in the US and other markets.' Olivan responded at the time he had been having 'sleepless nights' worried that WhatsApp was 'the real deal.' Facebook had also been concerned around that time that Google could acquire WhatsApp before it did. But Zuckerberg said in court Wednesday, during cross examination by Meta's lawyer, that he thought it was 'extremely unlikely' that WhatsApp would build competitive features after his first meeting with the platform's co-founder Jan Koum. Facebook bought WhatsApp in 2014 for $19 billion. Zuckerberg also claimed that Meta made both platforms better for users by acquiring them. Zuckerberg originally built Facebook to connect and share content with friends and family. That's the market that the FTC claims Meta now dominates. But Zuckerberg said that kind of use of his product has been declining. The FTC's lawyer on Tuesday asked Zuckerberg about an internal document from 2022 that indicated 'friending and friend sharing are losing steam.' 'The amount that people are sharing with friends on Facebook, especially, has been declining,' Zuckerberg said. 'Even the amount of new friends that people add … I think has been declining. But I don't know the exact numbers.' But the future isn't necessarily the content creator-filled feeds that have become the norm on Meta's products. Instead, Zuckerberg said, messaging between individuals or friend groups is becoming more popular than sharing content on more public social media feeds. 'Messaging has been growing dramatically, and sharing with friends in feeds has been declining,' he said Tuesday. It's not just TikTok and Snapchat; Google's YouTube platform is also a major rival to Facebook, the Meta CEO said on the stand this week. YouTube has indeed been capturing the attention of younger audiences; Pew Research found that nine in 10 US teens use YouTube, while Facebook usage has 'steeply declined' over the past decade among that age group. Zuckerberg attributed this in part to a rise in 'richer forms of media,' like video, as mobile networks have grown more capable in the last 10 years. 'YouTube is the most competitive for creators,' he said Wednesday, referring to online personalities that garner huge followings through posting videos on platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. 'My understanding … is that people spend more time on YouTube than on Facebook and Instagram combined, certainly more than either one independently,' he said. Still, Meta holds a firm grip on the social media market, especially in the US, according to Pew Research, where it operates a quarter of the most widely-used social media platforms.
CNN
16-04-2025
- Business
- CNN
Spinning off Instagram, the decline of ‘friending' and other takeaways from Mark Zuckerberg at the FTC monopoly trial
CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended Meta's acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp on the stand this week during the start of trial over the blockbuster antitrust lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission. But, it turns out, Zuckerberg predicted that he might find himself in this position years ago – and even proposed the idea of spinning off Instagram himself. That was one of several takeaways from more than 10 hours of testimony from Meta's CEO, during which he pushed back on the FTC's claims that the company has built an illegal 'social network monopoly' by acquiring would-be rivals. The testimony painted a picture of how Zuckerberg views the competition and the company's struggles to keep up with a rapidly evolving social media landscape that it argues has pushed users toward rivals like TikTok and YouTube. There's a lot at stake for Meta, as it could be forced to offload Instagram and WhatsApp if it loses. Here are the biggest takeaways from Zuckerberg, who took the stand just before former Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg testified on Wednesday. In 2018, Zuckerberg raised concerns to other executives that 'as calls to break up the big tech companies grow, there is a non-trivial chance that we will be forced to spin out Instagram and perhaps WhatsApp in the next 5-10 years anyway,' according to an email produced in court. In light of that, Zuckerberg suggested spinning off Instagram because the company's 'family of apps' structure could hurt Facebook. He added: 'most companies actually perform better after they've been split up.' Of course, Meta didn't end up spinning Instagram or WhatsApp off, and it's now in court fighting the FTC to avoid having to do just that. Zuckerberg was indeed concerned that WhatsApp and Instagram could threaten Facebook's dominance prior to buying the platforms, documents presented during FTC lawyer Daniel Matheson's questioning suggested. In 2011, Zuckerberg appeared to realize that Facebook's now-defunct Facebook Camera service was falling behind Instagram in functionality and popularity. 'In the time it has taken us to get our act together on this, Instagram has become a large and viable competitor to us on mobile photos, which will increasingly be the future of photos,' Zuckerberg wrote in an email at the time. Facebook ended up acquiring Instagram for $1 billion in April 2012. In a 2012 email to then-COO Sandberg, Zuckerberg said then-Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer's teams 'are executing well technically but their results this year are only okay so far.' 'Messenger isn't beating WhatsApp, Instagram was growing so much faster than us that we had to buy them for $1 billion,' he wrote in the email. 'That's not exactly killing it.' Then in 2013, Zuckerberg told then-growth head Javier Olivan he worried that WhatsApp would develop features similar to Facebook and Instagram and could 'start winning in the US and other markets.' Olivan responded at the time he had been having 'sleepless nights' worried that WhatsApp was 'the real deal.' Facebook had also been concerned around that time that Google could acquire WhatsApp before it did. But Zuckerberg said in court Wednesday, during cross examination by Meta's lawyer, that he thought it was 'extremely unlikely' that WhatsApp would build competitive features after his first meeting with the platform's co-founder Jan Koum. Facebook bought WhatsApp in 2014 for $19 billion. Zuckerberg also claimed that Meta made both platforms better for users by acquiring them. Zuckerberg originally built Facebook to connect and share content with friends and family. That's the market that the FTC claims Meta now dominates. But Zuckerberg said that kind of use of his product has been declining. The FTC's lawyer on Tuesday asked Zuckerberg about an internal document from 2022 that indicated 'friending and friend sharing are losing steam.' 'The amount that people are sharing with friends on Facebook, especially, has been declining,' Zuckerberg said. 'Even the amount of new friends that people add … I think has been declining. But I don't know the exact numbers.' But the future isn't necessarily the content creator-filled feeds that have become the norm on Meta's products. Instead, Zuckerberg said, messaging between individuals or friend groups is becoming more popular than sharing content on more public social media feeds. 'Messaging has been growing dramatically, and sharing with friends in feeds has been declining,' he said Tuesday. It's not just TikTok and Snapchat; Google's YouTube platform is also a major rival to Facebook, the Meta CEO said on the stand this week. YouTube has indeed been capturing the attention of younger audiences; Pew Research found that nine in 10 US teens use YouTube, while Facebook usage has 'steeply declined' over the past decade among that age group. Zuckerberg attributed this in part to a rise in 'richer forms of media,' like video, as mobile networks have grown more capable in the last 10 years. 'YouTube is the most competitive for creators,' he said Wednesday, referring to online personalities that garner huge followings through posting videos on platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. 'My understanding … is that people spend more time on YouTube than on Facebook and Instagram combined, certainly more than either one independently,' he said. Still, Meta holds a firm grip on the social media market, especially in the US, according to Pew Research, where it operates a quarter of the most widely-used social media platforms.
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mark Zuckerberg on the stand: ‘Crazy,' ‘scary' ideas led him to buy Instagram and WhatsApp
It's too bad there are no cameras allowed in federal courtrooms, because I really would like to see Mark Zuckerberg testify. He was the leadoff witness in the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust lawsuit against Meta, and that in itself was news. The clash is the most sweeping attempt to dismember the world's biggest social network, and goes to the heart of how competition is defined. Hawley Demands Zuckerberg Testify On Alleged Ties Between Meta, China Not since the government broke up AT&T more than four decades ago has a mega-corporation faced the prospect of being torn apart. The suit was filed in the first Trump term (the president couldn't stand Facebook at the time), aggressively pursued by Joe Biden, and now has finally come to trial in a Washington courtroom. Read On The Fox News App Trump once told me Facebook was such a threat to society that he used it as justification for flip-flopping on his effort to ban TikTok. But since he won a second term, Zuck, like many tech bros, has been cozying up to the new sheriff in town, including a $1-million donation to the president's inaugural. There are reports that when the man who runs Facebook recently met with Trump, he asked about the possibility of dropping the lawsuit. Obviously, it didn't work. The focus of the trial is Zuckerberg's decision to buy Instagram and WhatsApp when they were small start-ups. Fact-checking Director Warns Of 'Crisis' As Meta, Trump's Doge Cuts Threaten Their 'Honorable, Patriotic' Work The FTC's lead lawyer questioned Zuckerberg about a platform meant to foster ties between family and friends to a concentration on showing users interesting third-party content through its news feed. "It's the case that over time, the 'interest' part of that has gotten built out more than the 'friend' part," Zuckerberg said. He added that "the 'friend' part has gone down quite a bit, but it's still something we care about." Translation: Screw the friends. Very 2010s. We've moved on. Zuckerberg spoke slowly – at least according to reporters who were there – and he was back on the hot seat yesterday. FTC lawyers pressed him on a stack of emails he had sent: "We really need to get our act together quickly on this since Instagram's growing so fast. "Instagram has become a large and viable competitor to us on mobile photos, which will increasingly be the future of photos." Whistleblower Tells Senate Committee That Meta Undermined Us National Security To Cozy Up To China "If Instagram continues to kick ass on photos, or if Google buys them, then over the next few years they could easily add pieces of their service that copy what we're doing now." Which was a flop called Facebook Camera. In yet another message, Zuck called Instagram's growth "really scary," saying "we might want to consider paying a lot of money for this." Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, and two years later spent $19 billion on WhatsApp. In an email to Tom Alison, head of Facebook, Z offered alternatives: "Option 1. Double down on Friending. One potentially crazy idea is to consider wiping everyone's graphs and having them start again." Alison responded: "I'm not sure Option #1 in your proposal (Double-down on Friending) would be viable given my understanding of how vital the friend use case is to IG." Now we come to the fascinating part. It's not breaking news that Mark's judgment can be flawed. Remember when he insisted that virtual reality would be the next big thing? But he argues that Meta has all kinds of rivals in the "entertainment" area, such as X, TikTok and YouTube – and he easily could have added Snap, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and HBO's Max. It's all about the battle for eyeballs now. There are only so many hours in the day. Mindshare is everything. Subscribe To Howie's Media Buzzmeter Podcast, A Riff On The Day's Hottest Stories And with group chats all the rage, Meta doesn't do well on that kind of interaction, with Instagram as a possible exception. Now of course it's in Zuckerberg's self-interest to testify that he competes with anything that has a screen. But it's not that far off the mark. Keep in mind that Meta has 4 billion active monthly users. I sure wish we could see the embattled CEO making the case that he's awash in a vast sea of article source: Mark Zuckerberg on the stand: 'Crazy,' 'scary' ideas led him to buy Instagram and WhatsApp
Fox News
16-04-2025
- Business
- Fox News
Mark Zuckerberg on the stand: ‘Crazy,' ‘scary' ideas led him to buy Instagram and WhatsApp
It's too bad there are no cameras allowed in federal courtrooms, because I really would like to see Mark Zuckerberg testify. He was the leadoff witness in the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust lawsuit against Meta, and that in itself was news. The clash is the most sweeping attempt to dismember the world's biggest social network, and goes to the heart of how competition is defined. Not since the government broke up AT&T more than four decades ago has a mega-corporation faced the prospect of being torn apart. The suit was filed in the first Trump term (the president couldn't stand Facebook at the time), aggressively pursued by Joe Biden, and now has finally come to trial in a Washington courtroom. Trump once told me Facebook was such a threat to society that he used it as justification for flip-flopping on his effort to ban TikTok. But since he won a second term, Zuck, like many tech bros, has been cozying up to the new sheriff in town, including a $1-million donation to the president's inaugural. There are reports that when the man who runs Facebook recently met with Trump, he asked about the possibility of dropping the lawsuit. Obviously, it didn't work. The focus of the trial is Zuckerberg's decision to buy Instagram and WhatsApp when they were small start-ups. The FTC's lead lawyer questioned Zuckerberg about a platform meant to foster ties between family and friends to a concentration on showing users interesting third-party content through its news feed. "It's the case that over time, the 'interest' part of that has gotten built out more than the 'friend' part," Zuckerberg said. He added that "the 'friend' part has gone down quite a bit, but it's still something we care about." Translation: Screw the friends. Very 2010s. We've moved on. Zuckerberg spoke slowly – at least according to reporters who were there – and he was back on the hot seat yesterday. FTC lawyers pressed him on a stack of emails he had sent: "We really need to get our act together quickly on this since Instagram's growing so fast. "Instagram has become a large and viable competitor to us on mobile photos, which will increasingly be the future of photos." "If Instagram continues to kick ass on photos, or if Google buys them, then over the next few years they could easily add pieces of their service that copy what we're doing now." Which was a flop called Facebook Camera. In yet another message, Zuck called Instagram's growth "really scary," saying "we might want to consider paying a lot of money for this." Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, and two years later spent $19 billion on WhatsApp. In an email to Tom Alison, head of Facebook, Z offered alternatives: "Option 1. Double down on Friending. One potentially crazy idea is to consider wiping everyone's graphs and having them start again." Alison responded: "I'm not sure Option #1 in your proposal (Double-down on Friending) would be viable given my understanding of how vital the friend use case is to IG." Now we come to the fascinating part. It's not breaking news that Mark's judgment can be flawed. Remember when he insisted that virtual reality would be the next big thing? But he argues that Meta has all kinds of rivals in the "entertainment" area, such as X, TikTok and YouTube – and he easily could have added Snap, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and HBO's Max. It's all about the battle for eyeballs now. There are only so many hours in the day. Mindshare is everything. And with group chats all the rage, Meta doesn't do well on that kind of interaction, with Instagram as a possible exception. Now of course it's in Zuckerberg's self-interest to testify that he competes with anything that has a screen. But it's not that far off the mark. Keep in mind that Meta has 4 billion active monthly users. I sure wish we could see the embattled CEO making the case that he's awash in a vast sea of rivals.
