The two founders of Instagram, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, have left their company and Facebook, the company that controls it, saying they want to “explore our curiosity and creativity again”. The news had been anticipated on the evening of Monday 24 September by the New York Times and later confirmed by Systrom, through a post on the Instagram blog, surprising numerous observers and social media experts. In recent years, Instagram has become central to Facebook's success, managing to maintain an overall positive image among users, unlike the social network struggling with privacy scandals, the spread of false news and Russian interference in the presidential elections. US of 2016.
The first version of Instagram was released by Systrom and Krieger in October 2010, with the intuition that in addition to creating photographic filters to apply to their images, users were also interested in sharing them in a simple way, without having to resort to email or messages. In just two months, it gathered over a million members, which increased to 10 million the following year. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, stepped forward in 2012 offering the co-founders of the app about a billion dollars for their company, in a deal to keep much of the business separate from the social network.
Systrom and Krieger have worked at Instagram for the past six years, taking care of the development of the application and tolerating the increasing meddling by Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives, interested in a tight integration with the social network. According to sources consulted by Bloomberg, the constant presence of Zuckerberg and the reduced independence were among the causes of the resignations of the two co-founders. The differences of views have never been made public, and the parties have for now limited themselves to standard and diplomatic formulas to communicate the resignation.
In his post, Systrom wrote that: “Building new things makes it necessary for us to take a step back, to understand what inspires us and then make it coincide with the needs of the world; this is what we have in mind ”. The Instagram cofounder then thanked Facebook for the last few years of working together: “Mike and I are grateful for eight years on Instagram and six years of working with the Facebook team. We have gone from 13 people to more than a thousand with offices around the world, all while building products used and loved by a community of over a billion people. “
Zuckerberg commented on the news with a brief statement, explaining that: “Kevin and Mie are two extraordinary leaders and Instagram reflects the combination of their talents. I enjoyed it and have learned a lot from working with them over the past six years. I wish them both the best and can't wait to see what they invent again. “
Without Systrom and Krieger, Facebook will likely continue on the path of greater integration of its social network with Instagram. Already in the last year Zuckerberg had begun to mention Instagram more and more often, for example during shareholder meetings, clearly indicating that he wanted to expand Facebook's services on the application as much as possible and vice versa.
The risk is that an excessive presence of Facebook could distort Instagram, prompting users to seek some alternative away from a company known for not having their privacy very much at heart. Snapchat, from which Instagram has drawn inspiration in recent years especially for ephemeral contents such as Stories, is beginning to be perceived as safer for the protection of their data and this could be an incentive to change for many users in the future. In the short term, however, Instagram will continue to maintain greater relevance in the social network landscape thanks to its one billion users.
It's not the first time that Zuckerberg's acquired app creators have decided to leave Facebook. Earlier this year, the co-founder of WhatsApp, Jan Koum, had announced his resignation apparently due to differences of views on the subject of privacy and data processing by Facebook. Brian Acton, another co-founder and central figure in the development of WhatsApp, had left last September and in the following months was very controversial towards Facebook, especially on issues related to privacy.
