The social media landscape changed after Facebook bought Instagram and WhatsApp. Both purchases were seen as Mark Zuckerberg's tactics to prevent Facebook's position from being threatened by other platforms. After Snapchat emerged, there were reports that Zuckerberg wanted to buy it but was rejected by its founder Evan Spiegel.
In the antitrust trial between Meta and the FTC this week, Zuckerberg was revealed to have once planned to buy Snapchat for $6 billion in 2013. This was in an email that was used as evidence in the trial. According to Zuckerberg, he wanted to buy Snapchat because he felt the app was not growing at a pace that was expected.
After the purchase offer was rejected, Facebook launched the Reel feature, which is very similar to the vertical video interface popularized by Snapchat. On the second day of the trial, the FTC accused Meta of anti-competitive business practices by taking over a platform that it felt challenged its position.