But they were less “skill” and more “surveillance”. He had very good usage statistics (which he shouldn’t have had) of these apps through Onavo - a popular VPN app Facebook bought for the purpose of spying on what users are doing outside Facebook.
Yes, they did supply data to FB (under the same contracts as everyone else). However, it was only supplied to the sales org, not the product org.
FB acquired IG because it was blowing up in SF and MZ (other leaders too) were looking at how quickly it appeared to be growing and how good it was.
Instagram was acquired before Onavo.