Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the two founders of Instagram, have announced their retirement. Insiders argue against Bloomberg that this is because of tensions between them and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. They wouldn’t agree on the direction the social medium is heading in.
“We plan to take some free time, to rediscover our curiosity and creativity,” says Systrom in a statement. “Building new things requires that we take a step back, understand what inspires us and link that to what the world needs. That’s what we intend to do,” that seems to suggest a new startup for the two of them.
Instagram was taken over by Facebook in 2012. Systrom and Krieger have been employees at Facebook ever since. However, the social medium was kept independent of Facebook, even though they did use Facebook’s infrastructure and resources.
Frustrations
Recently, however, frustrations had arisen due to the daily interference of Zuckerberg, according to the insiders. That would be the reason why the two leave. Systrom and Krieger have not officially announced the reason for their departure.
Chances are that Instagram will become more integrated with Facebook now that the founders are gone. According to the insiders, it would then become more of a division of the larger company, rather than an independent division. As a result of the news, Facebook shares fell by 2.2 percent on the stock exchange. Competitor Snap saw its shares rise by 2 percent.
“Kevin and Mike are extraordinary product leaders and Instagram reflects their creative talents,” Zuckerberg explains in a statement. “I’ve learned a lot by working with them over the past six years, and I’ve really enjoyed it.”
Instagram today has over 1 billion users.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.
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