The men who co-founded Instagram and sold it to Facebook for a billion dollars are resigning from the company without an explanation.
Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the co-founders of the photo-sharing app, have resigned and plan to leave the company in the coming weeks, adding to the challenges facing Facebook.
“Mike and I are grateful for the last eight years at Instagram and six years with the Facebook team,” Systrom said in a statement late Monday night. “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. We’re now ready for our next chapter.”
Their departures come as Facebook grapples with criticism over not guarding user information and after frequent clashes with Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg over the direction of Instagram, Bloomberg reported.
Facebook acquired Instagram in April 2012 for a combination of cash and stock worth some $1 billion at the time.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Systrom and Krieger “extraordinary product leaders” and said he was looking forward “to seeing what they build next.”
Instagram in June announced it passed a billion active users, and unveiled a new long-form video feature in a bid to attract ‘creators’ like those on YouTube
The departures raise questions about Instagram’s future at a time when Facebook faces its most sustained set of crises in its 14-year history.
For much of the past two years, critics have railed against Facebook for being careless with user data and for not preventing foreign interference across its network of more than two billion people.
The issues have started taking a toll on Facebook’s business, with the company saying in July that growth in digital advertising sales and in the number of its users had slowed down.