Everything is not ‘awesome’ at Facebook, says Instagram co-founder

Image: Getty Images for WIRED25

Everything may be awesome and cool when you’re part of a team, as The LEGO Movie taught us. But apparently that doesn’t apply to the team at Facebook.

The social media giant has been rocked by a number of high-profile departures recently — the highest profile of whom were Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. The pair resigned late last month, after rumors of feuds with former friend and Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg. 

At the Wired 25 summit in San Francisco on Monday, his first public appearance since the unexpected exit, Systrom finally gave us an on-the-record hint that all was not well in the House of Zuckerberg. 

“Nobody leaves a job because everything is awesome,” Systrom told a packed house. “Any time you leave anything, it’s sad … obviously, there were tensions.” 

Systrom refused to be drawn any further on what those tensions were, insisting that there were “no hard feelings at all” over his sudden departure. “Life is full of chapters,” he said. 

Earlier reports suggested he was upset by decisions that further integrated Instagram into the Facebook ecosystem — for example, removing any mention of the photo app when users shared its pictures on Facebook. 

Systrom had been working for Zuckerberg since 2012, when Facebook bought Instagram for a  billion dollars. Compared to the company’s later acquisitions, such as the $19 billion paid for WhatsApp, that now seems like peanuts. 

Having recently become a father, Systrom talked a lot about how that changed his perspective. He spoke passionately about wanting to reduce instances of bullying on the platform and to give Instagram users more control over their comments section — for example, allowing Taylor Swift to turn off comments on her bombshell Instagram post that revealed her political leanings. 

As for his next act? Systrom isn’t discussing any specific plans yet. “Number one, I want to be a great dad, which is harder than Instagram,” he said. Another of his current activities that is harder than running a billion-dollar, billion-user app: learning to fly. “I’m still at the phase of thinking ‘I’m going to die'” in pilot training, the entrepreneur said. 

But at some point, Systrom does plan to fly back to the tech world and answer the endless stream of inquiries he says he’s currently receiving from venture capitalists. 

“I’m 34,” Systrom reminded the audience. “I’ve got a few more Instagrams left in me.”