The particular battle being waged between Twitter and Instagram is very interesting, and it seems to go deeper than what we knew. Twitter withdrawing support for the photography social network wasn’t just a way to stick one to Facebook, its greatest opponent who has been the owner of Instagram for several months, but also a small bit of revenge. According to The New York Times, Twitter almost had the deal to purchase Instagram closed when its CEO, Kevin Systrom, threw the offer out and chose to go with Facebook.
The reasons for the change seemed to be financially motivated at first – Facebook was willing to pay almost double that of Twitter’s offer, but the microblogging network “only” offered $525 million compared to the offer of over $1 billion that Mark Zuckerberg threw on the table. And although Twitter almost had the deal closed when its offer was rejected, within just a week they found out that Instagram had accepted an offer from Facebook without letting Twitter make a counteroffer before the official announcement was made.
All this information contrasts with testimony of Instagram’s CEO. Kevin Systrom stated before California’s Department of Corporations, which was set to evaluate the purchase, that they hadn’t received any other offer besides that from Facebook. We don’t know why neither of the companies involved in the purchase didn’t want to make public that there was a previous bidder.
