What if Mark Zuckerberg had not bought Instagram and WhatsApp?

Mike Isaac - The Irish Times - 17/04
The big ticket deals were derided at the time, but the apps are now two of the most important parts of Meta’s business

In 2012, when Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg cut a $1 billion (€880 million) cheque to buy the photo-sharing app Instagram, most people thought he had lost his marbles.

“A billion dollars of money?” joked Jon Stewart, then host of The Daily Show. “For a thing that kind of ruins your pictures?”

Stewart called the decision “really lame”. His audience – and much of the rest of the world – agreed that Zuckerberg had overpaid for an app that highlighted a bunch of photo filters.

Two years later, Zuckerberg opened his wallet again when Facebook agreed to buy WhatsApp for $19 billion. Many Americans had never heard of the messaging app, which was popular internationally but not well known in the United States.

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