Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger are leaving Instagram, the company they founded in 2010. Officially, they want to devote themselves to “rediscovering their curiosity and creativity”, unofficially, they are leaving over disagreements with Mark Zuckerberg.
Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 in an incredible $1 billion deal. With the increasing success of Instagram, this takeover proved to be one of the most lucrative technological investments of the decade. Mark Zuckerberg gave a diplomatic take on the departure of Instagram’s founders.
“Kevin and Mike are extraordinary product leaders and Instagram reflects their combined creative talents,” Zuckerberg said in a statement. “I’ve learned a lot working with them for the past six years and have really enjoyed it.”
Instagram officially started its life in October 2010. Today, the platform has over one billion active monthly users. Thirteen associates worked on the development of the first version of Instagram. Today, this social network, one of the most popular in the world, has over a thousand employees worldwide. From its beginnings, as a platform for photographers, it constantly developed by adding new features such as news, video clips, and, finally, YouTube-like IGTV. In the year 2016, Instagram developed the Stories feature (or rather stole, if you ask heads of Snapchat).
Systrom and Krieger are not the first founders to leave one of Facebook’s daughter companies. Jan Koum left WhatsApp, which Facebook took over in 2014, because he was openly opposed to Zuckerberg because of his attitudes towards privacy and advertising.
