Systrom and Krieger have resigned from their posts as chief executive and chief technology officer at Facebook respectively, saying they planned to take time off. The duo leaves six years after selling Instagram for $1 billion.
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.
It became the fourth Facebook platform to eclipse the billion-user mark, including the namesake social network with more than two billion users, and the messaging applications WhatsApp and Messenger.
Facebook acquired Instagram in April 2012 for a combination of cash and stock worth some $1 billion at the time.
Instagram has been a hit with young internet users, an audience that Facebook is keen to keep in its fold.
The departures come as Facebook grapples with the worst crisis in its history, especially as it involves guarding information users share online.
Many see Facebook as being the main vehicle for spreading false information in recent years, and of being used by nefarious interests out to sway the results of the elections such as the one that put President Donald Trump in the White House in 2016.
The Cambridge Analytica public relations disaster, in which Facebook admitted that up to 87 million users may have had their data hijacked by the British consultancy firm, came on top of widespread criticism of the social network’s propensity to spread and accentuate large amounts of completely false information.
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