"Facebook Acquisition of Instagram" - Hope, Expectation and Ambition

In just ten years, Instagram has grown from a simple photo-sharing app to a $100 billion tech company. To achieve this success, co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have gone through a challenging journey from Instagram's launch, to its acquisition by Facebook, and a bitter feud with their new boss, Mark Zuckerberg.

These are all behind-the-scenes secrets that have never been revealed to the public, until the film Facebook Acquires Instagram (original title: "No Filter") was released.

Written by technology reporter Sarah Frier - a familiar writer for Bloomberg News specializing in writing about large technology companies. Although this is a debut work, with the sharp writing and deep understanding of an experienced journalist, Sarah Frier tells a fascinating story, thereby showing how the ideals of technology company founders can be affected by the pressure to make profits.

"Facebook's acquisition of Instagram" - The journey of building the Instagram empire and Facebook's ambition to dominate (Photo: Firstnews).

The Journey from $1 Billion to 1 Billion Users

When they launched Instagram in 2010, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger had no idea that one day their app would reach one billion monthly active users, attract celebrities, lead trends, and generate nearly 30% of Facebook's revenue.

The two Stanford University alumni simply designed an app they thought people would love: one that made everything you photograph look better with filters that improved image quality.

Instagram was originally created for a community of photography enthusiasts. Systrom and Krieger then leveraged the support of artists and celebrities to quickly gain popularity with the general public.

Eighteen months after Instagram launched and exploded in growth, the two co-founders made a surprising decision: They sold Instagram to Facebook for a billion dollars.

In 2012, this was an "unimaginable number" that had never appeared in mobile app acquisitions. News of the acquisition immediately "shook" the technology world, making the startup with only 13 employees and no revenue, the world's first "technology unicorn".

The untold truth behind "Facebook's acquisition of Instagram" (Photo: Firstnews).

For most startups at the time, Facebook’s acquisition would have meant the end of their future. But for Instagram, things were just getting started. While all the companies Facebook acquired were eventually shut down, Instagram was promised to “become an important part of Facebook” without losing its autonomy.

The conflict began when Systrom and Krieger began to realize the core values of Facebook and Instagram were different, and the calculations behind the tech giant’s promise of “growing independently.” They could only adapt under their new roof if they were willing to adhere to Facebook’s metrics-driven business philosophy instead of celebrating cultural moments—the values that Instagram had pursued from the beginning.

The co-founders then went to great lengths to maintain the brand’s unique identity, treating Instagram as a separate company within the Facebook empire. They worked hard to negotiate with Facebook so that their employees would only make policy changes when necessary, resisting the parent company’s “growth at all costs” philosophy in favor of a strategy that emphasized creativity and celebrity.

It is this different approach to upholding cultural values and ensuring user benefits that has helped Instagram continuously conquer impressive milestones in terms of user numbers, improving features to enhance user experience and increasing advertising revenue... In 2015, under the urging of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram reached the one billion dollar revenue milestone at a record speed - eighteen months - since the first ads were launched on this platform.

But by the time the app hit a billion users, Zuckerberg—who had once championed Systrom and Krieger’s autonomy—felt threatened by Instagram’s success. The young CEO bluntly dismissed Instagram’s achievements, even suggesting that the app was growing at Facebook’s expense.

Author Sarah Frier (Photo: Firstnews).

Unrevealed truths

With a narrative style that takes a holistic view and combines the stories of many people, Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram is as compelling as a TV series. Through the book, the author not only tells a business story, but also reflects on the story of culture, reputation, and ultimately the connection between people on social media platforms.

Systrom and Krieger initially decided to sell Instagram to Facebook because they wanted their “brainchild” to be bigger, more relevant, and more enduring. But after hitting the billion-user milestone, the app they built became mired in a tangle of personalities, egos, and Facebook priorities.

In Zuckerberg's plan to build a social media giant, Instagram was supposed to appeal to a different audience than its parent company. And now that Instagram is growing faster in revenue and users than Facebook, Zuckerberg has ordered a halt to all support for the company.

This left the co-founders feeling punished for Instagram's success. As Sarah Frier notes in the book, "Every time Instagram achieved a modicum of success, Zuckerberg seemed to kick them right back in their place."

The tension between Mark Zuckerberg and his two co-founders was almost constant. Instagram's long-running battle with its "parent company" finally came to an end with the departure of Systrom and Krieger in 2018.

Throughout the book, author Frier skillfully "excavates" the details leading to Systrom and Krieger's sudden resignation, while revealing many dramatic details from exclusive information that has never appeared in the media.

Through Facebook's acquisition of Instagram , author Sarah Frier not only talks about the internal culture at Instagram, explaining how this application shapes popular culture, but also tells about the harsh survival flow in Silicon Valley, where potential startups face competitive pressure and domination ambitions from technology "giants".

The book is journalist Sarah Frier's attempt to give readers an authentic look at Instagram, told from a perspective "without any filters except the author's own."

Fortune magazine described Facebook's acquisition of Instagram as "one of the most riveting books about Silicon Valley's struggles." The book won Sarah Frier the Financial Times' "business book of the year" award in 2020. It was also named a "best book of the year" by Fortune, The Economist, and NPR.

Source: https://dantri.com.vn/van-hoa/thuong-vu-facebook-thau-tom-instagram-hy-vong-ky-vong-va-tham-vong-20230406135846197.htm