The founders of Instagram resign amid tensions with Zuckerberg
The founders of Instagram resign amid tensions with Zuckerberg...
Instagram, the Facebook-owned social sharing network, has announced the resignation of its two co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, from their respective positions as general manager and technical director of the company.
This double departure comes months after that of Jan Koum, co-founder of the WhatsApp instant messaging service, also owned by Facebook.
The reason why ...
The social media giant, under fire from criticism both for its inability to effectively protect personal data and for its role in spreading false news, is thus deprived of the services of those who have developed two of its most popular services.
In a note posted on his blog, Kevin Systrom says that he and Mike Krieger plan to take a step back to explore "our curiosity and inventiveness again." According to the agency Bloomberg, the two men announce their departure in the wake of more and more frequent conflicts with Mark Zuckerberg, the general manager of Facebook, including the progressive integration of Instagram at the service of the development of the group, at the expense of the qualities of the photo sharing application.
When Jan Koum, one of the strongest advocates of personal data protection, departed, the Washington Post reported that he disagreed with the strategy applied to WhatsApp and opposed Facebook's attempts to use the private data information recorded by the messaging service. Reacting to the departure of the two co-founders of Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg described them in a statement as two "extraordinary responsible product managers".
And what now?
"I have learned a lot from working with them for the last six years (...) I wish them good luck and I look forward to following the progress of their next work." The departure of Jan Koum in May had led to a reshuffle in the direction of Facebook, including a larger role given to Chris Cox, a close ally of Mark Zuckerberg at the head of the main application of the social network, in the supervision of WhatsApp and Instagram, the latter thus losing their independence which had been given to them at the time of their purchase. Another close friend of Mark Zuckerberg, Adam Mosseri, a busy Facebook news feed, has become Instagram's product manager.
Set up in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the Instagram application was bought in 2012 by Facebook for one billion dollars. The service now has more than one billion active monthly users and is expected to generate more than $8 billion in revenue this year, according to EMarketer data.
Founded in 2009, WhatsApp was purchased in 2014 by Facebook for $22 billion, while the app was earning only a small amount of revenue. The latter is used by more than a billion people around the world.
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Interesting! Tell me again what partners Zuckerberg has gotten along with from the beginning and over the years?
Thanks John, interesting developments to be sure.
Who knows what Zuckerberg has in mind for the future of these platforms.
KyleAnn
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Seems like Zuckerberg is one tough guy to work with!
I would say tough and not very straight as much as I know of him Sydney.