Facebook's commercial imperative threatens to photo-bomb Instagram
Mark Zuckerberg is starting to suck Facebook's eponymous product dry as far as rapid growth is concerned. Next target: Instagram. That might explain the departure of Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Six years after Zuckerberg acquired their then 13-person start-up for $715m (about R10bn now), the photo-sharing app has become Facebook's most important source of growth. Zuckerberg has subsequently assumed a more hands-on role, which became a source of tension. In recent earnings calls, Facebook has emphasised its intent to secure more ad dollars from Instagram. That's good news for investors, but it also poses a risk to the very foundation on which Systrom and Krieger built their success. People are drifting away from Facebook in part because the quality of its content has declined. That's not just down to too many users flooding the place, but also because much of the recent growth in ad revenue has come from small and medium-sized enterprises. As those companies...
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