Instagram’s Co-Founders Are Leaving Amid Frustrations With Facebook ⇥ recode.net

Mike Isaac of the New York Times got the scoop:

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the co-founders of the photo-sharing app Instagram, have resigned and plan to leave the company in the coming weeks, adding to the challenges facing Instagram’s parent company, Facebook.

Mr. Systrom, Instagram’s chief executive, and Mr. Krieger, the chief technical officer, notified Instagram’s leadership team and Facebook on Monday of their decision to leave, said people with direct knowledge of the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Mr. Systrom and Mr. Krieger did not give a reason for stepping down, according to the people, but said they planned to take time off after leaving Instagram. Mr. Systrom, 34, and Mr. Krieger, 32, have known each other since 2010, when they met and transformed a software project built by Mr. Systrom into what eventually became Instagram, which now has more than one billion users.

Kurt Wagner, Recode:

Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger are resigning from the company they built amid frustration and agitation with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s increased meddling and control over Instagram, according to sources.

[…]

It’s not uncommon for founders to leave after selling their company. But Systrom and Krieger stayed longer than many would have guessed, and remained influential throughout their tenure. Systrom was the product visionary and was hands-on even after bringing in other product execs to do more of the day-to-day execution.

Krieger, meanwhile, was actively running Instagram’s engineering team, and was seen by many internally as the company’s “heart and soul.”

Instagram has been one of the few apps you could hold up as an example that being acquired by a massive and deeply unethical company might not necessarily be ruinous. Under Facebook, Instagram launched a reasonably complete website version, underwent a major rebrand, bookmarking, a better “Explore” tab that is a genuine improvement over the old search function, more tasteful filters, way better editing tools, and lots more. It has resisted a Facebook-ization; at its core, it still feels like Instagram.

But, now, I’m worried. The kinds of — ugh — growth hacking techniques that Facebook likes in its own apps are surely just around the corner. I don’t think that the Instagram many of us have stuck with and generally like is here for much longer.