Tuesday, March, 19, 2024 02:29:26

Instagram founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, have reportedly announced to have resigned from the company, which is now owned by Facebook Inc. As per trusted sources, the duo has decided to take some time off to explore their curiosity and creativity again and that they were grateful for the years spent at Instagram and with the Facebook team.

However, the founders are reportedly leaving the company as tensions with Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg have grown regarding the direction of the platform. In response, Zuckerberg described the duo as extraordinary product leaders and said he’s looking forward to seeing what they build next.

Since its acquisition, Instagram had become substantially important for the Facebook empire at a time when Zuckerberg is still coping with a series of crises following allegations against the firm for mishandling user’s data and its failure to restrain the spread of misinformation, specifically during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Systrom and Krieger’s resignations come months after the departure of Jan Koum, co-founder of messaging service WhatsApp, which Facebook acquired in 2014 for $19 billion.

According to sources familiar with the matter, Brian Acton, the other WhatsApp founder who quit Facebook in 2017, had supported calls earlier this year for deleting Facebook due to Cambridge Analytica’s ability to harvest user’s data without their knowledge.

While Facebook is dealing with numerous crises, Instagram has stayed untarnished and continues to add more users to its platform. A report by Bloomberg mentioned that Facebook is running out of people to sign up for its social network as it already has more than 2.2 billion users, which means the platform will increase its dependency on the photo-sharing app for its future.

Facebook shares have witnessed a 6 percent plunge this year and the departure of Systrom and Krieger may put further pressure on the stock, cite sources.