The social media was buzzed by the news that two co-founders of Instagram, namely Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom, resigned from Facebook. As widely known, Facebook acquired the photo-sharing social media app – Instagram – few years ago. Both cofounders designed to resign after the increasing tension with Mark Zuckerberg – the founder and CEO of Facebook. The turbulence was related to Instagram’s future.

Why Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom Resigned

Actually, Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom did not explicitly tell why they decided to resign. However, on a blog post, Systrom wrote that they wanted to take time off and explore their ideas, creativity, and curiosity again. So, does it mean that they could not explore their creativity while joining Facebook? They did not tell anything about it. In fact, Systrom implied some differences in how Facebook and Instagram work. According to him, Facebook is data driven, while Instagram is more about creativity than it is about data.

In addition, the public actually know that both co-founders had been in increasing tension with Zuckerberg. This began after the wake of Russian interference related to the use of social media in the last US Presidential election. This resulted in decreasing public trust over the social media company. The company was also shaken by the privacy scandal at the beginning of this year.

In addition, there was executive shuffling at Facebook management. In September, a Facebook representative said that the Marne Levine – the former COO of Instagram – would return to global partnership division Levine replaced Dan Rose for the position. Then in May, Instagram’s vice president moved to a new blockchain division own by Facebook.

Departure of the Instagram’s co-founder happened almost simultaneously with the departure of Jan Koum, who is a co-founder of WhatsApp. Facebook acquired the end-to-end encryption messaging app in 2014. After the acquision, Koum remained as a the CEO of WhatsApp. However, he also resigned few weeks ago.

What Why Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom Will Do

Back then, the co-founders sold the photo-sharing app to Facebook for $1 billion. facebook paid them with stock and cash. Instagram grew in a relatively promising trend, since it obtained more than 1 billion users. This number made Instagram one of the fastest-growing social media apps bought by Facebook. The growth was partly attributable to the Instagram Stories feature, which came out two years ago. This feature allows the users to share real-time videos.

Both cofounders of Instagram were pretty sure that Facebook and Instagram would have a bright future despite their absence. On the other hand, they need time to create new things, to understand what the world needs, and to build a brand-new products or apps. However, they did not tell what exactly they wanted to do after the resignation. “We are ready for the next chapter,” that was what Systrom told to the journalists.

Similarly, Zuckerberg respected what Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom had created. He was also curious about the next product that they would produce. He was pretty sure that they could come up with extraordinary product, as what they did before with Instagram.