A new look at Facebook's headquarters during its scandal year

Instagram has grown to become a big hit after being acquired by Facebook in 2012 for $ 1 billion. And while this seems like a win for Facebook on the surface, it has also fueled internal tensions within companies, with Instagram's growth starting to surpass Facebook's flagship service. By the end of 2018, the founders of Instagram have left the company.

Sources told Wired that senior executives feared that Instagram would not cannibalize Facebook's own users. As a result of favorable media coverage of former CEO of Instagram, Kevin Systrom, Zuckerberg reportedly ordered in 2014 that executives must be approved by him or Sandberg to pass interviews in magazines . Some people involved told Wired that it was an effort to prevent poaching, while others said it was aimed at keeping Systrom under control.

In July, at the time of presenting Facebook's results to investors, Facebook's top executives struggled to communicate the slower growth of its users while highlighting Instagram's success. A person who attended the keynote communications told Wired Zuckerberg and others that she was discussing the possibility of saying in the call for results that Instagram's growth was mainly due to his relationship with Facebook. Whetstone would have advised against this approach to Zuckerebrg and suggested that he invoke the founders of Instagram. Zuckerberg's script finally stated, "We believe that Instagram has been able to use Facebook's infrastructure to grow more than twice as fast as it can on its own. Congratulations to the Instagram team and to all the teams in our company who have contributed to this success. "

Following the call, Zuckerberg told the founders of Instagram that he was removing the media that Facebook had previously provided to the team that was directing Facebook's traffic to Instagram, for the purpose of Prevent users from leaving or going over the main Facebook service for the benefit of Instagram. Systrom would have explained the change of staff in a memo, which feared Facebook. Shortly after, Systrom took a paternity leave that never ended.