Zuckerberg’s Jealousy Held Back Instagram and Drove Off Founders

paywall

The article reads like a bad hit job it tries to paint facebooks position as bleak while ignore all its products have continued to experience amazing growth.

It paints a picture of what the author want the world to be like rather than reality. One of the biggest examples is how they view regulation as a risk to Facebook while Facebooks views it as a guarantee of market dominance.

Reads like fan fiction rather than objective reporting.

> The article reads like a bad hit job it tries to paint facebooks position as bleak while ignore all its products have continued to experience amazing growth.

Did you really expect anything better from bloomberg? Instagram is one of the largest social media platforms in the world. If zuckerburg "held it back", then he should "hold back" everything and become a trillionaire.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net...

4 out of the top 6 social media platforms are owned by zuckerburg. Hate the guy for his greed and insatiable appetite for your data, but the idea that his "jealousy" held back instagram is laughable. The article reads like a silly gossipy teen manufacturing drama for attention. But that's the media for you.

One thing I'm surprised not to hear mentioned in this article is regulation. I'm sure there's a level of trying to assert Facebook's dominance over the more successful acquired product. But one thing that wasn't mentioned is that there is a strong political movemeent saying we should break up big tech. Elizabeth Warren was called out specifically by Zuckerberg as the most effective and transformative politician of our time.

I think one thing we need to consider about facebook is the classic middle manager wrangling. If you think that a priority you like is under the chopping block, you tie it inextridcably to something else and then go "Oh, well! Can't can this project because you'll be destroying our most important project". It is essential for Facebook to get to the point where it is so difficult to distinguish between Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp that you can make a coherent argument that you can't split that company into 3 separate parts. That's a great reason for a lot of what was going on at facebook, but the article doesn't seem to consider it.