The new head of Instagram is current vice president of product Adam Mosseri, who starts in his new role today.
The appointment was widely anticipated, but the Facebook-owned company formally announced the news this morning in a coauthored blog post from Instagram’s two outgoing founders. News emerged last week that CEO Kevin Systrom and CTO Mike Krieger were leaving the company, and would be seeking to appoint replacements in the coming weeks. The CEO appointment has taken less than a week to finalize, while the CTO role remains vacant.
“In his role leading Instagram, Adam will oversee all functions of the business and will recruit a new executive team including a head of engineering, head of product and head of operations,” the blog post said.
Rapid rise
Mosseri joined Facebook in 2008 and went on to work in various roles at the company before emerging as head of product at Instagram just six months ago, so this represents a fairly rapid rise to the Instagram hotseat.
June 5th: The AI Audit in NYC
Join us next week in NYC to engage with top executive leaders, delving into strategies for auditing AI models to ensure fairness, optimal performance, and ethical compliance across diverse organizations. Secure your attendance for this exclusive invite-only event.
The nature of the reveal today is also notable, as Krieger and Systrom are presented as central facets of the official announcement — the trio are pictured smiling on a sofa together, while the title to the blog post is: “Co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger announce Adam Mosseri as new Head of Instagram,” which is an unusual way to make such an announcement. This is perhaps in part due to recent negative publicity about some high-profile departures at Facebook subsidiaries, including WhatsApp and Instagram.
Indeed, WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton walked out of Facebook last year, leaving behind around $850 million worth of unvested stock, while earlier this year WhatsApp’s other cofounder Jan Koum revealed he was also planning to leave the company. Last week, Acton gave an extensive interview, calling himself a sellout for accepting Facebook’s money. After Systrom and Krieger revealed that they are leaving Facebook, rumors abounded of dwindling autonomy at Instagram, while some reports suggested that they had clashed with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Today’s official announcement clearly attempts to paint a positive picture, one that portrays harmony — the Instagram cofounders as leaving to pursue other interests, rather than being forced out due to disagreements.
“We remain excited for the future of Instagram in the coming years as we transition from being leaders at Instagram to being just two users in a billion,” the duo added. “We’re confident that under Adam’s leadership, Instagram will evolve and improve and we look forward to the future of the product and community.”
