Instagram’s CEO

Great article, this is how I feel about Instagram personally:

- Great app who turned a camera phone into a powerful camera for those who couldn't afford one of those expensive Canon/other brands of good cameras.

- Democratizing photography made phone vendors spend more time build better camera, we're at a point where cameras on certain phones are as a good as stand-alone cameras for photography.

- Filters have been around forever but with filters in instagram a whole generation became addicted to what they're able to do - turn a simple picture in a more interesting picture. To the point where people had to start create the #nofilter hashtag. Snapchat took the filters to the next level or rather the next iteration and also made itself a name because of them.

- Instagram also has it's darkness too: some people say you can get depressed if you browse instagram too much, seeing all those happy pictures of delicious food, beautiful looking humans, cars, paradise-like places, etc. It sounds crazy right? :shrugemojigoeshere:

Short aside: Friends of friends who used to work in the same building with the founders of Instagram told me that on the night of their launch they stayed up till the early morning hours to fix their server issues because their initial instagram app was such a success! Honestly, you can't get more real than that - almost like a movie!

Thanks instagram co-founders for your creativity throughout the years: Although copying most of Snapchat's features wasn't a great move, it was a business decision that worked really well for your userbase..I can smell that being a very Facebook thing to do. I remember Snapchat turning down $3B acquisition offer, I guess that move really showed how much FB wanted Snapchat's features.

Back to Instagram - were the co-founders good businessman? I don't know, instagram pre-acquisition was very cool and ad-free. Now it's ad-ridden and almost an annoyance. Every 3rd post/video/story has ads on it. Blocking those ads is a pain (I still haven't found a universal workaround since ad-blocking doesn't work as well). Another reason why I don't use FB's app.

You can smell the FB influence on Instagram far 10 miles, I would also feel sad to see my own creation being taken over by a bunch of product managers who come from the company who acquired my app because they need to "ad-ify all the things".

Finally, I think instagram is the only app I use on the daily, every single day (more than Uber/Lyft, more than Spotify and as much as Twitter but not as much as Chrome) ! Hope they can find something cool they're passionate about and build the "next" Instagram, even if it's not a camera-app!

> Are there instances where the thesis that “folks who outsource the business side to the acquirer” stay?

Hsieh? I mean, I don't know too much about the inner workings of Zappos but I find it hard to believe that the FB->IG relationship is significantly different from the Amazon->Zappos one.

Then again maybe he's just the exception that proves the rule.

The advertising and media giant, Dentsu, seems to be pretty good at retaining original founders.

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/how-dentsu-re...

This is a sobering look at what it takes to build a business vs a product (vs, even smaller scale, a feature).

You have to be willing to put in the long hours (err, years) and the schlepping to do all the business-y stuff:

* distribution

* monetization

* back end systems for admin users

* sales channels

etc, etc

Or, you can cash out and assimilate, err integrate, with a larger company that has done that hard work and lose control of your destiny. That's OK, most of us don't have full control of our destiny, and building product can be more fun. It's just a choice you should make with your eyes wide open.

I will say that I think he dismisses Snapchat's founders too quickly. Yes, they've been struggling, but they are trying to build a business rather than just integrate with an existing conglomerate.

It will be very interesting to see if Systrom et al can build another product, and if so, if they will try to build a business as well.

Ben Thomson is one of the best folks writing about the business of tech. Such lucid writing and even someone who's fairly early on in their careers will be able to understand what's going on.