A common social media app for students at Pleasant Valley High School to browse through in between classes is Instagram. Instagram is a very popular app especially for teens. Since 2010 Instagram and Facebook have been working together and sharing ideas so each app can run as smoothly as possible.
Lilly Meyers, a senior at Pleasant Valley High School, stated “I go on Instagram all the time. I would say my top two apps that I go on the most during the school day are Instagram and Snapchat and I know all of my friends spend most of their time on those apps too”.
Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger first founded Instagram in 2010 and then later sold it to Facebook for one billion dollars. Facebook tried to then use this new ownership to their advantage because more teen nowadays go on Instagram much more than Facebook. According to Karleigh Nading, a junior at Pleasant Valley High School, “I would say Facebook is more for adults and Instagram is more for teenagers. If a teenager has Facebook that would be weird, and if an adult has Instagram that would be weird”. Now that Facebook was working together with Instagram their goal was to get more users on Facebook.
Things seemed to good to be true for Facebook because on Monday, co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger resigned from Instagram and working with Facebook. Not one specific event happened for them to resign so suddenly, it was a bunch of minor situations that built up to make the big decision. Kevin Systrom stated “Mike and I are grateful for the last eight years at Instagram and six years with the Facebook team. We’ve grown from 13 people to over one thousand offices around the world, all while building products used and loved by a community of over one billion. We are now ready for our next chapter”.
Some of the things that went wrong between the two apps included disagreements on how to fix mistakes within their system, staff changes, and who has the most control when running the app. Systrom and Krieger also stated they “escaped all of Facebook’s problems”. These problems included profile issues, foreign elections, interference of who gets to be in the most control of the app, and worst of all, fake news.
Now the big question is what will Facebook do now that it is working alone? Jonas D. Kron, director of the shareholder advocacy Trillium Asset Management, who owns 52,00 shares of Facebook states “We think there needs to be a systematic change”. Not only does Instagram see Facebook’s flaws, but Facebook share holders have recognized them themselves.
We will get to see what Facebook will be like without working with the two main co-founders of Instagram and see if this causes a negative toll on the Instagram community. Meyers stated, “I think Facebook and Instagram are both really good apps that attract a lot of users and businesses. I am curious to see what will happen and if there will be any changes made to the apps”.
Facebook’s plan is to now work on improving the app and to continue attracting more users. Before Facebook bought Instagram, there were 31 million users, now there are 1 billion and they are hoping to continue increasing that number. Lastly, Systrom and Krieger stated, “We remain excited for the future of Instagram and Facebook in the coming years as we transition from leader to two users in a billion. We look forward to watching what these innovative and extraordinary companies do next”.
