Instagram Co-Founders Leave Facebook

Earlier this month news broke out that Instagram’s Co-Founders had made the decision to leave Facebook after eight years at the company and six years at Facebook. We discuss the news on Industry Spotlight…

See below for the full video transcription.

 

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION:

Lee: Okay the final topic we’re just going to quickly touch on is the cofounders of Instagram leaving after, I believe, 13 years. 

Chris: That’s a long time. 

Lee: I think. Something like that.

Chris: Has it even been around for? 

Jamie: Eight years.

Lee: Eight years. Eight.

Jamie: Eight years. 

Lee: Fact check. Eight years, yeah. I think the takeaway from this is just, again, Facebook are Facebook aren’t they. They’re going to do things how they want to do it. I think the Instagram chaps are creative by nature and I don’t think they’ve got the license to do what they want to do anymore so they’re leaving. I don’t think they’re going to do bad out of it.

Chris: Where do you think they’ll go?

Lee: I think they’ll set something up.

Jamie: That’s what they’ve said haven’t they.

Chris: Do you think it’s just going to be Instagram again. 

Jamie: Yeah, and beat Facebook. That’s it. It’s weird isn’t it when you get creative guys that launch really cool concepts and then they get bought out and they’re just bored aren’t they. It’s not what they do. 

Lee: But they’ve grown from, like, a 10 people team to like thousands of staff and a $100 billion company. 

Jamie: Just to upload pictures.

Lee: In eight years. Just for photos. So, yeah, good. I think it’s another thorny story for Facebook. I think Facebook’s never-ending bad press year of 2018 just continues with this. I don’t think it’s going to do them any good. I’d like to check the share price and see if it’s affected that in any way, but, yeah, just watch this space, I think. 

Chris: It is testament to them though. To build it up that big when Facebook’s already dominant in the market, to go up against them. Anybody would be thinking, you know, before Instagram came along, oh, I’m not even going to have a crack at that because we’re just going to fall flat on our faces. 

Jamie: Instagram’s been around a long time now. 

Lee: That’s the thing about creatives though, isn’t it? They don’t think like that. They don’t think that they’d be going up against Facebook. 

Chris: Makes you wonder, though. How many times can they do it until people…it’s only small tweaks to the demographic, isn’t it? Or the actual platform that they’re making, really, when you compare Facebook and Instagram.

Jamie: Well, it’s a subset, isn’t it? Everything Instagram has been able to do historically Facebook has been able to do it’s just displayed and interacted with it differently.

Chris: But it makes you wonder how many times can they do it and be successful? Is it saturated yet? Will there be more?

Jamie: People like platforms that just do one thing and do it well don’t they. People don’t want to sign up to Facebook because of privacy and people from work looking at it, but they’ll go on Instagram because it’s just photos isn’t it?

Chris: Yeah.

Jamie: Bit different. Instagram never asks you where you work, how old you are, nothing. I suppose it might do for content and stuff, but yeah.

Chris: Makes you wonder though, how many more ways can they do it and be successful?

Jamie: Infinite.

Chris: There’s probably more, isn’t there, really? When you think about it. 

Jamie: Yeah.

Chris: So it makes you wonder if they’re just going to go on and do it again and just conceive a completely different demographic.

Lee: They’ll build something and then Facebook will buy it again. 

Jamie: You could just do photo uploads again but do it for another niche, like cooking, call it like Chefstagram. 

Chris: Go on then. Get it built. 

Lee: Patent.

Jamie: There’s always a market for any tech, whether it’s been done before or not, if you position it right. You can do what you want, can’t you? There’s no rule against things that can be successful at all, like Facebook does anything doesn’t it. You can literally do anything you want on Facebook’s platform there’s so much stuff in it. Just take a nice bit out and position it somewhere else. Works, doesn’t it? That’s why they haven’t just dissolved Instagram; they could quite easily have just bought it, folded it and gone, right all your photos are in Facebook now. Come on. 

Chris: They just need to start amalgamating the platforms. 

Jamie: No. Why? 

Chris: I don’t know like a cross between Instagram and LinkedIn. 

Jamie: Why would you do that?

Lee: Instant Tin.

Jamie: We still need to create Link Tin. 

Lee: Instant Tin. Oh, dear me.

Chris: Not Instant Tin. That’s stupid.