If Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t so obsessed with his avatar wandering Web3, he might have named parent company Lyrebird instead of Meta at the 2021 rebrand.

The Australian native bird is known for imitating not just other birds, but everything from clicking cameras to chainsaws, crying babies and even a construction site.

The company behind Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook has an impressive number of competitor copy features to secure its position, from Stories in 2016 in response to Snapchat’s rise to Reels in 2020 in response to TikTok. Way back in 2015, Timehop, a technology platform that brings back memorieswoke up to find Facebook had copied their app in every way possible.

Meta’s most recent “innovation” is paid verified tapping – fresh off the back of Twitter owner Elon Musk introducing the same.

At a 2020 U.S. Congress antitrust (aka competition) hearing, Zuckerberg well-known competitors and was asked if Facebook had ever threatened to clone rivals’ products when it tried to acquire them, with the Meta boss taking his bets by responding “not that I remember”.

So it’s something bordering on corporate flattery when Meta copies your product, so Australian “link-in-bio” startup Linktree is no doubt blushing from the compliment Instagram bestowed them today with the world’s most prolific mimic who finally got their all breaks longstanding rule of only one sitelink to allow up to five links in your Instagram profile.

Now Facebook revenues plummet and Meta struggles to grow wider, it’s all part of the ongoing struggle of social media platforms to grab a bigger slice of the creator’s economy to cut the ticket along the way.

For Linktree, the move could be seen as tanks on the lawn, but the 9-year-old Melbourne-based startup took to Twitter to savor the moment and point out that Meta is one of more than 35 million users who has its product.

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— Linktree (@Linktree_) April 18, 2023