In 2009, the startup where I was working was hitting the skids, and our investors (correctly) were not willing to back us. We all kept grinding for a month or two in honorable futility, but after a while, my bank account depleted and I had to go.
To make various ends meet and to keep my mental health during the wind down however, I took up some contract work that I found through various friends in the SF startup scene. One company that I really liked and did some small stuff for was Burbn, which was a mobile-only location check-in that was hinged around taking photos of your location.
Missing my friends in NYC (I made a lot of friends in SF, but my inner circle were my college buddies from CMU; I went to tech and they went finance, sigh), I decided to leave SF to head to NYC and get a fresh start.
As I was leaving, I wanted to tie up a few loose ends, so I emailed my contact at Burbn and said I was likely to be unavailable for any more work, but that I liked the project and hoped for the best for him. He responded and said that he was near funding on a small pivot, and that if I was interested, there might be a full-time role available. I declined - I was mentally done with SF and the startup scene (Larry Chiang, 111 Minna, the rise of FB spam-crap like RockYou, etc.) as it was then.
That person was Kevin Systrom; that pivot was Instagram.
Why did everyone run into Larry so much back then and what happened to the startup party scene... which was so odd at the time.
Edit: Found my answers on quora, I’ll let you look yourselves as I don’t want to link to what may be gossip but I had a laugh and a wave of nostalgia for those heady nonsense days
That is rationalization, where we try to apply "logic" to make ourselves feel better about a bad situation.
The chances are low that life is better now, after losing out on a chance to be an early part of Instagram.
That's like saying a homeless person's life may be better than if he had a home. Ya statistically that scenario is possible. But if you had a choice, do you really that homeless person to stay homeless? Or do you want that person's life to improve so that he eventually has a home?
"the most..." what? Is that an add-your-own-ending quote for reflecting on personal philosophy? :).
(Also, this is a plot point in Bostrom's "The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant" - the last people to die will really be mourned, and people will then start asking if, maybe, they could have started working on the problem sooner...)
Might be worth reaching out and saying best wishes.
Short & sweet. Not for any ulterior motive, just out of the spirit of an old, forgotten friendship.
Here's an offtopic observation. This article (from the New York Times) denoted the names of the Instagram founders as "Mr. Systrom and Mr. Krieger..."
The Wall Street Journal has a corresponding article about this story. In that article, the Instagram founders' names are written, "Messrs. Systrom and Krieger..."
Despite frequently reading both papers, I can't recall ever seeing "Messrs" before. I thought it was a typo at first; turns out it's a formal way to refer to two or more men instead of saying Mr. several times. This isn't germane to the story at hand at all, but I found it to be an interesting and educational part of reading both articles about the same story.
Specifically, it's an abbreviation of the French messieurs, which is just multiple misters. Maybe it's more formal now, but it was ordinary and frequently used in the past in both French and English writing. (Obviously, still quite commonly used in, um, French today.)
> "Messrs" is pretty old fashioned language. It's uncommon to see it in modern use.
Though it may be part of the WSJ's house style, so you might see it in its pages quote a bit (the paywall means I don't read it enough to know). For a similar example, see the New Yorker's continued archaic use of the diaeresis:
> We’re planning on taking some time off to explore our curiosity and creativity again. Building new things requires that we step back, understand what inspires us and match that with what the world needs; that’s what we plan to do.
h/t to Bloomberg's @sarahfrier, who also says this:
> My sources say the Instagram founders are leaving after increased tension with Mark Zuckerberg over the direction of the product. IG culture/priorities very different from FB. See my April story for background
Well, there's more than a 50% probability that they're leaving because of conflicts with Facebook, the privacy issues and the push to add more and more ads everywhere. If this were the case, I hope they'd speak up sooner than later. We need voices from within FB and its acquisitions to tell everyone how messed up things are behind the scenes.
But you have to give credit to how the company started and how it's been running all these years. Instagram is still flourishing (and grew in the face of competition from Snapchat, even by copying its features and making it better) and seems like a nicer group of communities with a lot less of the nastiness that's seen on Facebook (I don't have much first hand experience, but do see some feeds on the web). That's not easy to cultivate, and for reasons I haven't read about or examined, the Instagram users have self-selected such a group to be in.*
Here's hoping the founders start something new and fresh, far from privacy invasive platforms.
*: I'd be interested in any writings about how these communities developed to be what they are.
Instagram today is completely different from the way it started. The app is different, the community is completely different. Literally nothing is the same. It doesn’t even resemble what it once was. It has completely devolved. It may very well be the most toxic property out there. It’s hard to imagine something more phony, optimized soley as a way to waste your time tapping away giving “likes”. Watching somone use Instagram is one of the most depressing things I can imagine in terms of human social interaction.
IG was an app designed to share photos in the moment. It was a digital Polaroid. That was a pretty cool idea. That core feature is essentially gone and so is the community around it.
IG now is a platform of the least common denominator. 90% of the posts are garbage spam that takes the form of meme/image macro hybrid abominations designed to get likes. I don’t even really know what you call them. They aren’t videos, or flops or even memes. The best phrase I can think of is digital media noise. IG is like some kind of weird digital static. If you wanted to broadcast incompressible nonsense into outspace the best way to do it would be broadcast the explore tab on IG.
>Instagram today is completely different from the way it started. The app is different, the community is completely different. Literally nothing is the same. It doesn’t even resemble what it once was. It has completely devolved.
>IG now is a platform of the least common denominator. 90% of the posts are garbage spam that takes the form of meme/image mace hybrid abominations designed to get likes.
I guess you aren't following the right people or accounts, then.
I've seen plenty of engaging and cool content. I've even become friends with people from the opposite side of the world. Basically a modern kind of pen pal.
And this all happens while I'm still able to share photos in the moment.
The only thing about IG I absolutely hate is the non-chronological feed. It's ridiculously terrible, even reloading before I've seen the most recent posts.
> 90% of the posts are garbage spam that takes the form of meme/image mace hybrid abominations designed to get likes.
IG is like twitter in that the more effort you put in to curate the people you follow, the more rewarding your timeline is. I never look at Explore, but I look at the pictures in my own timeline and enjoy them.
Facebook, Twitter and Reddit are all pretty message board-y, they’re all centreded online discussions/arguments, and that can get toxic in a hurry, unless the discussion is super focused and tightly moderated. Instagram has always been a place to share the nicest photos you take, and that’s basically it, the comments are extremely secondary. There’s way less opportunity for conversations to turn toxic when there are few conversations.
I'd venture that they're extremely wealthy, still friends, and decided it's time to go have fun rather than prescribe this to Facebook's ethical challenges like the article would have you believe.
We can both be correct. There can be a catalyzing event that caused their departure (your follow up post mentioned product disputes), and that they also want to follow other pursuits (eg. have fun).
My point was that it was quite a stretch for the Times to equate this situation with Jan Koum's departure and this narrative around Facebook's moral dilemma. These guys stuck around for nearly a decade, which is frankly the story that should be written about given how infrequently that happens.
How many pre-announcements must a person make before they are sufficiently prepared for an actual announcement? This is already a pre-announcement of the announcement of the resignation, because this info is leaked from within Instagram
According to the article, this info was leaked to the reporters from several people who knew about it, and the co-founders have already notified Instagram's leadership team. It's not just anyone, but two co-founders of one of the world's most prominent tech companies. If they are indeed leaving "just for fun", presumably they care enough about their company and their colleagues to have given an explanation for their unexpected, simultaneous departure. I would also assume they aren't naive enough to think this wouldn't be leaked before an official press release.
I don't understand, what could the founders have done differently? At some point they must make the initial step to notify leadership that they are leaving. This the step that was leaked. Were they supposed to write their own press releases before they even told anybody that they were resigning?
In my experience, it’s typical for senior leadership at a large company to have a carefully orchestrated departure. No internal announcement would be sent until after a press release is prepared. The set of people that know would be kept extremely small, even to the point of keeping direct reports in the dark.
If Facebook truly was unprepared, it’s reasonable to assume they weren’t expecting the announcement.
You don't think the co-founders of a company, who are leaving for purportedly benign/positive reasons, owe it to their company to have a prepared explanation? Given that the sudden resignation of a founder -- nevermind both co-founders at the same time -- is generally seen as worrying news?
edit: fixed punctuation. By "prepared explanation" I don't mean a formal press release, but a reason (even if vague) that can be publicly disclosed, even before the official announcement, so it doesn't look like the founders are jumping ship for bad/antagonistic reasons.
Because people worked under and followed the for the better years of their life to make them rich?
Because the people you work with are more important than the work you do?
Because when you form a relationship with someone, contractually, business, or otherwise, you do, in fact owe them something, be it money, respect, or even some simple common decency.
Not to Mark Zuckerberg, but to the colleagues who've worked for them for years in their shared mission and who would, as normal human beings, appreciate knowing that the high-level departures are not a sign of trouble.
I wonder what's Facebook's move after Instagram becomes stale and no longer "cool". It seems to me that the popularity of social networks are cyclical, and there's very little that a company can do to satiate a user's appetite for something new. That's before we discuss future regulatory troubles Facebook might face.
What future revenue streams does Facebook have? Are they even capable of creating something new that users love? As far as I can tell, they haven't created any popular products outside of Facebook version 1.0.
Out of all the major tech companies, Facebook's position seems the least stable IMO.
They have over 2 billion monthly active users. This is a global penetration rate that is the best in the world. They have done something that no other company in the world has done. They are relevant to basically the vast majority of all Internet users in the world. To say they are the least stable or that their power over most humans is waning is, quite frankly, ludicrous.
To put it in perspective, they would need to lose 3/4 of their users to reach Twitter levels. Sure, Hacker News has loads of people that hate Facebook, but don't be fooled by the HN bias here. Also, all the armchair CEOs here would do anything to get even 1% of Zuckerberg's success. I don't think Facebook is going anywhere soon.
Windows has seen an officially reported install base as high as 1.5B. This was a few years ago; their numbers have taken a hit recently.
Considering the average annual revenue per U.S. Facebook user is ~$20, startlingly less in other countries, arguably Microsoft, not Facebook, is the more interesting company. Nearly as many active users as Facebook, but substantially more revenue per user (~$50-$150 for an OEM key? Add in office subscriptions, enterprise users, oh my) and substantially more "eye-time" (monthly active? once per month? ha. you used Windows the entire time you were on the PC). Arguably. I don't want to argue it. It's just a thought and it's not the point.
No one looks at Microsoft and thinks "they're going to absolutely dominate the home computing OS market in 2030." They owned the planet and they threw it away. At best they'll remain a second-rate player in the cloud market, riding the ripples of their 90s enterprise clients until those die out as well.
Meanwhile Apple and Google ate their cake. No one saw that coming in 2001. Wait, the company that nearly went bankrupt and now makes that really bad MP3 player, and... Google who? Hold on let me AltaVista that. The companies that are, today, worth almost nothing are worth a combined $2T in just 17 years? What the hell happens to the US Dollar in the next decade?!
Shit changes, and it changes overnight. Sometimes literally, most of the time just "faster than you expect". The only thing you can bet on is that "active users" means about as much as the moon landing conspiracy theories.
> Considering the average annual revenue per U.S. Facebook user is ~$20, startlingly less in other countries, arguably Microsoft, not Facebook, is the more interesting company.
Your points are all valid. However, you're comparing Apples to Oranges. MSFT makes a large chunk of their revenue from Enterprise customers. I don't think it's fair to put the two companies in the same category.
Your larger point however, I def agree. Microsoft diversified itself, and Facebook will eventually too.
Facebook might mature though. They have large data centers all over the world, if they wanted to, they could make their own cloud service and sell that.
React is one of the most used front-end frameworks in the world, so it’s not like they aren’t capable of doing what Microsoft does, if that becomes their focus.
I’m not sure either company is really that interesting though. Azure is limited AWS but with better support, Windows is more horrible than it’s ever been and the .Net environment is a shit show for anyone working in it because it’s running around like a confused cat. Which is awesome for some people, but terrible when you have to keep your employees up to speed.
I mean, going from asp to mvc to core 1 to core 2 has been ridiculously expensive. So has replacing half our services with modern power shell and orchestra. It’s not bad tech wise, but it’s so ridiculous expensive from an organizational perspective.
The worst bit is that in a few years, you can add to things Microsoft has changed for the apparent fun of it.
We didn’t have to adopt core from a tech perspective, of course, but my developers wanted to, to stay relevant in the .net job scene, so we kind of had to from a management perspective.
It’s too much though, and they are doing the same across platforms. Like we have skype for business and we’ve trained 7000 employees to use it, and now it’s becoming obsolete... That’ll litteraly cost us millions because 5000 of our employee can’t tell you if they are on an android or iPhone device when they contact support, so many of them won’t havd learned Skype before it dies. :p
I think the thing that describes the problems with modern Microsoft the best is how they enabled new 365 features by default. So suddenly we had non-tech savvy people creating teams (and new emails that were added to our address books).
Anyway, this was a long rant, but it’s just to show that Microsoft isn’t really doing well in non-tech focused enterprise. And we’re their main market share.
> They have over 2 billion monthly active users. This is a global penetration rate that is the best in the world. They have done something that no other company in the world has done. They are relevant to basically the vast majority of all Internet users in the world. To say they are the least stable or that their power over most humans is waning is, quite frankly, ludicrous.
Yahoo used to be the most popular email provider, too. It was relevant to a vast number of American internet users, when American internet users were most of the internet.
I don't think you can infer future relevance from present usage statistics. There are definite network effects with social networks, but fashion and novelty also play a major role. If Facebook/Instagram lose the latter, I don't think the former can sustain the kind of user engagement they require to thrive.
Facebook is here to stay. They are not Myspace. They are following the model of many of the tech companies that survive. If they can't copy it they will buy it. They have enough revenues that they can buy any hot startup and nurse it to success. Zuckerberg will likely be CEO for at least the next 10 years and has shown that he can learn from mistakes and continue to succeed. He's one of the few that has learned his way to successful CEO of a large company.
There's very little that can bring them down. Even if the government regulates them the regulations will not be so stringent that they will cause Facebook to fold. The irony is that regulations favor big companies since they make it harder for small start-ups to succeed.
facebook might actually move away from Web 3.0 and then become here to stay like ... TV 2.0
the content already feels like a mindless one-way feed from a centralized provider. barely at all like the original incarnation that connected me with my friends.
Facebook is dead. They have lost all momentum. The older people that have not moved on to snapchat or Instagram are exactly those that will be flummoxed by the changes.
I mean, can they not BUY the next one? It's what they did with Instagram after all.
>What future revenue streams does Facebook have?
The amount of Data facebook has on the behavioral nature of current parents and current and future American children of said parents is _insane_. Facebook may not be a social media company for ever, but big blue will be an advertising powerhouse for a while with the amount of data they have.
I'm much more bearish on antitrust than most people throwing that term around, but even I am against Facebook being able to buy another upstart social network. They cannot be allowed to do that.
Maybe they can do something completely different like Oculus and leverage their infrastructure to make the best product possible. But even then that's a huge gamble, and I don't think Oculus has lived up to anywhere near the hype.
Cool probably doesn't matter nearly as much as it used to given Facebook's user base size. As long as they have eyeballs, they'll have a revenue stream. Their willingness to pay what appeared to be outrageous sums for competitors users reflects that. But now that they've got the lions share of the social network using world, it's doubtful that they'd need to do that again in a big way unless they see something getting serious traction with people who are not already Facebook users.
You say least stable but let's look at Yahoo as an example: they've been dead for over a decade and lots of people still use them. Massive data breaches, people still use them etc. etc. Imagine how many people will keep using Facebook if all they manage to do is be a less bad version of Yahoo. People are creatures of habit and once they develop a habit, especially one that doesn't cost $$$ upfront, it takes a herculean effort to get most of them to change their behavior. Once people are hooked, many of them seem to be willing to be abused nearly forever.
I think the next big thing for FB is VR. If VR becomes mainstream soon (and I think it will) and FB lead the space with Oculus, then their future is bright.
Facebook’s Chris Cox has been put in charge of all the company’s apps now.
When Ms. Sandberg went unmentioned in a major reshuffling of Mr. Zuckerberg’s top product executives in May, the moves caused former employees and executives to speculate that she had been displaced as the second-most-powerful figure by Chris Cox, a close friend of Mr. Zuckerberg, who had been elevated to a new role in charge of all the company’s apps, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.
Instagram often seemed to have its own way of doing things and its own aesthetic within Facebook, one that the founders championed. Recently, however, the winning strategy for Instagram seems to be copying features from Snapchat, and abandoning the style that got it to its first 100 million users. I can imagine that being frustrating.
As a non VC, non founder, the only surprise to me is that anyone stays beyond contracted minima. The first, assuming you had taken a role as a VC, you'd want out to go do the VC thing somewhere else. The second, you would be watching your baby pimped out and sold for drugs on the streets, as things you had no desire to see were done, in the name of profit.
Or #3, they saw their baby get better and better, while remaining independent and equipped with 1000x more resources to do what they want, on top of getting a nice job and being paid.
1. They probably had some sort of golden handcuffs with FB, a vesting period?
2. How often do you get to experience the thrill of leading one of the fastest growing and most popular apps of all time? That's a lot of power and prestige, you're basically a real world rockstar. Why leave while the missile is still going upwards to space at full speed, even just for the experience? It's an exhilarating ride, I'm sure, and when it gets too stuffy because FB is trying to milk it for every cent, you can bail and find something else fun to do.
I think you have to step back and wonder what "growth at all cost" can turn into. Multiple research studies have confirmed Instagram, relative to other social media apps, has basically been engineered to maximize FOMO and is making people more depressed, isolated, feeling "not good enough", and in a constant cycle of comparison with others.
When you create an app that is as consequential as Instagram is on society/culture/media I think any smart person would have to step back and have that "what have I created" moment.
I have no clue why they are both leaving at the same time but I would imagine a health dose of reflection is in both of their futures.
> I think any smart person would have to step back and have that "what have I created" moment
There's little correlation IMO between being a smart person and being a caring person. The average FB shareholder or employee could give less than a fig if the product is making people depressed, as long as their eyeballs stay attached to it.
> this might be the new standard for tech companies.
Unfortunately, I believe this is just hopeful ambition that won’t become a reality. The majority of folks I meet in tech tend to be a paycheck or two away from financial catastrophe and generally shy away from rocking the boat. A small percentage have their house in order, and those are the folks that have the luxury to resign so quickly when they have moral/ethical objections.
The popularity of finance/banking declined after the financial crisis. It might not make a difference for people already in, but it definitely impacts recruitment for new grads.
I was shocked to discover that many people making salaries amongst the highest percentile in the world are indeed a few months without paychecks away from being in an unpleasant financial situation.
I’m not too sure what the overarching reasons for that are, but my guess is that lifestyle inflation is very real, financial education isn’t very common, and many people focus on the wrong abstractions (ie decision making starting with “I make $200k a year, I can afford this!” rather than “what’s my burn rate?”)
Yea, people who don’t live here have no idea how expensive it is. Based on how much I make, my rural east coast parents, bless them, probably wonder why I live in a home 1/2 the size of theirs with a 50 mile commute, and not a castle with a 7 car garage. Bay Area prices and taxes...that’s why!
Without being too careless[1] I think it is plausible to assume they and their children will not "have" to work again. The "have" is in scare quotes because, in my experience with tech people I know who have 'banked out' of the workforce, working on something is often more rewarding, over a longer term, than sitting around consuming entertainment while eating and drinking. So nearly everyone I know who became multi-millionaires or beyond have ended up still doing something interesting with their lives.
So stepping down from FB is kind of a no brainer, especially if it becomes less "fun" due to issues raised by other people. Building stuff is fun, cleaning up a mess, is not fun. Trying to do stuff while the mess is getting worse and worse around you, that is pure torture in my opinion.
[1] There is a sad track of people who have made millions and then lost it all due to poor choices.
"It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds. In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic."
The NYT was the first to break the story and should be the linked source based on merit. But more to the point, their paywall is trivial to bypass -- is it not still possible to avoid the paywall by going into incognito mode?
Kevin and Mike have my utmost respect for everything they have done for the world. Thank you so much for truly believing in something and giving it all up for that.
In 2009, the startup where I was working was hitting the skids, and our investors (correctly) were not willing to back us. We all kept grinding for a month or two in honorable futility, but after a while, my bank account depleted and I had to go.
To make various ends meet and to keep my mental health during the wind down however, I took up some contract work that I found through various friends in the SF startup scene. One company that I really liked and did some small stuff for was Burbn, which was a mobile-only location check-in that was hinged around taking photos of your location.
Missing my friends in NYC (I made a lot of friends in SF, but my inner circle were my college buddies from CMU; I went to tech and they went finance, sigh), I decided to leave SF to head to NYC and get a fresh start.
As I was leaving, I wanted to tie up a few loose ends, so I emailed my contact at Burbn and said I was likely to be unavailable for any more work, but that I liked the project and hoped for the best for him. He responded and said that he was near funding on a small pivot, and that if I was interested, there might be a full-time role available. I declined - I was mentally done with SF and the startup scene (Larry Chiang, 111 Minna, the rise of FB spam-crap like RockYou, etc.) as it was then.
That person was Kevin Systrom; that pivot was Instagram.
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