Instagram Co-Founders to Step Down From Facebook

By Deepa Seetharaman

The two co-founders of Facebook Inc.'s popular Instagram app are stepping down, according to the company, a surprise 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 executives over Instagram's autonomy in recent months, according to people familiar with the matter. Among other things, Facebook officials, including Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, were pushing Instagram to more rapidly grow the photo-sharing app's user base, one of the people 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, according to another person familiar with the matter. Earlier this year, Mr. Zuckerberg shifted a senior Facebook executive, Adam Mosseri, over to Instagram in anticipation that the founders might leave, this person said.

Messrs. Systrom and Krieger founded Instagram in 2010 and sold the app to Facebook in 2012 for about $1 billion. It has become one of Facebook's most popular products at a time the company is for the first time dealing with slowing growth.

The news of the resignations was earlier reported by the New York Times. Mr. Systrom confirmed the move in a blog post late Monday night.

The departures represent 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.

Facebook's Instagram purchase was a relative bargain compared to WhatsApp. After Messrs. Systrom and Krieger reaped a huge payday despite their 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, more than double the amount it had early last year.

Write to Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 24, 2018 23:45 ET (03:45 GMT)

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