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Book Summary

15 min

Brief Summary

Instagram was founded by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger as an app for creative and artistic storytelling through photos. Users soon realized that cultivating a perfect feed and developing a personal brand on Instagram could lead to a career as a social media “influencer,” and followers became a type of commodity. The app’s runaway success attracted the attention of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who purchased the app for $1 billion in 2012. However, Systrom and Zuckerberg butted heads, and cultural differences between the two CEOs led to lots of infighting and conflict. Ultimately, Zuckerberg began claiming credit for Instagram’s impressive growth, before pulling the resources that had enabled Instagram to become so successful. Without resources or support from Facebook, Systrom and Krieger left the company.

About the Author

Sarah Frier is a senior technology reporter for Bloomberg News and a frequent contributor to Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg Television. She covers social media companies and their far-reaching impacts on business and society.

Frier holds a degree in business journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is based in San Francisco.

Topics

Biography & Memoir

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What You’ll Learn

How Instagram went from a carefully curated, artistic, community-based app to an revenue generating powerhouse
The history of the complicated and often fraught relationship between Instagram and Facebook
How Instagram and Facebook algorithms help direct the posts users see and the impact these feeds can have on global politics

Who Is This For

Individuals who are interested in the impact social media has on politics and society
Employees who work in tech and are curious about the founding and growth of Instagram
Social media users and influencers who want to learn more about the history and impact of the apps they frequently use

Key Insights

At its founding, Instagram was intended to be a creative app for artistic storytelling. However, as the app grew, it also began to attract negative content, including posts about drugs, pornographic material, suicide, and bullying. Its success also caught the eye of other tech giants, and ultimately Facebook ended up purchasing Instagram for $1 billion in 2012. However, even though Mark Zuckerberg now owned the app, he began to feel threatened by Instagram’s continued growth. He feared that Instagram was poaching Facebook’s users, and conflict and infighting between Zuckerberg and Instagram founder Kevin Systrom was rampant. In particular, they disagreed over advertising, which Systrom wanted to be curated and artistic, so as to keep with the theme of the app, but Zukerberg viewed only as a way of generating as much revenue as possible. Systrom also had to contend with competition from Snapchat, a rival camera app that attracted users because it did not place the same pressure on cultivating a perfect online feed that Instagram did.

While Systrom eventually beat out Snapchat, he continued to battle with Facebook, and ultimately Zuckerberg pulled his access to many of the resources that had helped Instagram grow. Systrom and his Instagram co-founder, Mike Krieger, finally left the company, leaving Instagram vulnerable to fake postings, negative content, and user problems that remain unaddressed by the Facebook team.

Instagram’s Artistic Beginnings

Instagram was founded by Stanford University graduate Kevin Systrom. He worked at Google and at another start-up but had no interest in joining other chaotic new Silicon Valley start-ups like Facebook or Twitter. Instead, he decided to make his own app.

When Systrom first developed the app, he intended it to be a place to share art. The goal of the app was to be a creative space where artists could share beautiful, artistic photos, and Instagram posts would themselves be art. However, the app ended up having a much bigger impact on society that the founder originally intended.

Systrom pitched Instagram’s predecessor to a venture capitalist, who only agreed to fund the app if Systrom agreed to add a partner, so Systrom hired Mike Krieger, a Brazilian engineer, and fellow Stanford graduate. Soon, Systrom had already racked up $500,000 in investments, but the app had generated little interest with the public.

Systrom and Krieger decided to keep the app as simple as possible, in order to appeal to as much of the public as possible. They focused on its...