The co-founders of Instagram are stepping away. Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger founded Instagram in 2010 and plan to leave the company in the coming weeks, according to the New York Times. They sold the photo-sharing app to Facebook in 2012 for about $1 billion. Facebook shares fell more than 2 percent in premarket trading after news that the Instagram executives were leaving. Systrom and Krieger did not give a reason for their departure, according to people familiar, but said they planned to take time off after leaving Instagram. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg praised the two men, “Kevin and Mike are extraordinary product leaders and Instagram reflects their combined creative talents.” Zuckerberg also said he was looking forward to seeing what Systrom and Krieger build next. It is unclear who will lead the company after the founders leave. The departures raise questions about Instagram’s future at a time when Facebook faces its most sustained set of crises in its history. For much of the past two years, Facebook has been criticized for its handling of user data and also for not preventing foreign interference.<doc-sep>The two co-founders of Facebook Inc.’s FB -0.23% popular Instagram app are stepping down, a move marking continued tumult at the social-networking giant. The co-founders— Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s chief executive, and Mike Krieger, chief technology officer—clashed with Facebook FB -0.23% executives over the extent of Instagram’s autonomy in recent months, according to people familiar with the matter. Earlier this year, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg shifted a senior Facebook executive, Adam Mosseri, over to Instagram in anticipation that the founders might leave, one of the people said. Among other things, Facebook officials, including Mr. Zuckerberg, clashed with the co-founders over growth tactics and how to more rapidly expand the photo-sharing app’s user base, another person said. Senior Facebook officials had known the two men were frustrated working within a large company and had begun making preparations for them to leave, another person familiar with the matter said. “We’re planning on taking some time off to explore our curiosity and creativity again,” Messrs. Systrom and Krieger said in a joint statement. “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.” Messrs. Systrom and Krieger founded Instagram in 2010 and sold the photo-sharing app to Facebook in 2012 for about $1 billion. It has become a bright spot within Facebook as the company for the first time deals with slowing growth. “Kevin and Mike are extraordinary product leaders and Instagram reflects their combined creative talents,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in a statement. “I’ve learned a lot working with them for the past six years and have really enjoyed it. I wish them all the best and I’m looking forward to seeing what they build next.” Current and former employees expressed surprise late on Monday about the moves, earlier reported by the New York Times but which hadn’t been announced widely within the company yet. The two men were seen as key defenders of Instagram’s culture within Facebook and widely respected among Instagram employees. Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom talks to The Wall Street Journal about the first camera he ever owned, his favorite Instagram filter and the most important thing he’s learned from working with Mark Zuckerberg. Photo: Robert Libetti/The Wall Street Journal The departure represents the second major exit by the founders of an acquisition that had become central to Facebook’s growth. WhatsApp co-founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton left after a series of disagreements over how to wring more money from the messaging service, which Facebook bought for $22 billion in 2014. The disagreements at Instagram were similar, said a person familiar with the matter, saying the relationship between the co-founders and Facebook officials had been “tense” in recent months. One distinction is that the WhatsApp disputes centered on the debate over whether to allow ads within the messaging service, which the co-founders had long opposed, whereas Instagram embraced ads early on. Some of the tension began this year, according to people familiar with the dynamic, as Facebook and Instagram executives began to clash over the extent to which Instagram could chart its own direction within Facebook’s orbit. Some Facebook teams began exerting more control over their Instagram counterparts, one of the people said. Facebook’s Instagram purchase was a relative bargain compared with WhatsApp. After Messrs. Systrom and Krieger reaped a massive payday despite the company having no revenue and only about a dozen employees, it quickly became a go-to app for young people, many of whom had slowed their use of Facebook. This year Instagram topped more than 1 billion monthly active users, after adding hundreds of millions of users in roughly the past 18 months. Newsletter Sign-up Technology A weekly digest of tech reviews, headlines, columns and your questions answered by WSJ's Personal Tech gurus. PREVIEW Instagram had become a key cog in the Facebook empire as the social-networking giant enjoyed seemingly unstoppable growth and a stock price that climbed steadily upward. Those trends reversed in July, when the company sent tremors through the stock market by warning that its growth was slowing, an announcement that chopped almost $120 billion from the firm’s market value. The news in some ways heightened Instagram’s importance within the company, as its popularity among younger users is seen as more stable than at Facebook’s main platform. Instagram has also largely stayed out of the negative glare of Facebook’s privacy issues, which intensified earlier this year on the revelation that political firm Cambridge Analytica had accessed the personal data on tens of millions of users without their knowledge. Among the many efforts to turbocharge Instagram’s popularity, the company in June launched a new hub for long-form video, called IGTV, which was Facebook’s latest attempt to tap into growing demand among consumers and advertisers for mobile video. Marne Levine, Instagram’s chief operating officer who helped develop the app into a full-fledged business, was moved back to Facebook this month to become head of global partnerships. It isn’t decided who will take over leadership at Instagram, according to a person familiar with the matter. Write to Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com<doc-sep>
The co-founders of Instagram said Monday they had stepped down from Facebook, which acquired the photo-sharing app in 2012. CEO Kevin Systrom said in a statement on Instagram's website that he and Chief Technical Officer Mike Krieger are "planning on taking some time off to explore our curiosity and creativity again." "We've grown from 13 people to over a thousand with offices around the world, all while building products used and loved by a community of over one billion," Systrom's statement said. "We're now ready for our next chapter." In a statement, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Systrom and Krieger "extraordinary product leaders." "I've learned a lot working with them for the past six years and have really enjoyed it. I wish them all the best and I'm looking forward to seeing what they build next." The news was first reported by The New York Times. Founded in 2010 by Stanford University graduates Systrom and Krieger, Instagram has grown from a photo-sharing service into a popular photo app used by more than 1 billion people each month, according to CNET. Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, one month before the company went public. Since then, it has been considered one of the social media network's most successful acquisitions. Facebook has been mired in controversy since the 2016 elections. U.S. intelligence agencies have said that Russian actors used Facebook and Instagram to wage a campaign of disinformation in the election. In February, the Department of Justice issued indictments against 13 Russian nationals of breaking U.S. laws to interfere in the 2016 election. And earlier this year, Zuckerberg was forced to testify before Congress after admitting data firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked on the presidential campaigns of President Trump and Ted Cruz, had stolen data from as many as 87 million Facebook users. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the founder of WhatsApp, the global messaging service Facebook acquired in 2014, Jan Koum, said he was leaving the company. According to reports at the time, Korum expressed concern over Facebook's "attempts to use its personal data and weaken [WhatsApp's] encryption."