The co-founders of Instagram said that they were withdrawing from society

Instagram finally caught the eye of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, who realized how powerful Instagram's photo-sharing network would be, and saw the wealth of photo-sharing activities on his own social network. . Mr. Zuckerberg has been negotiating with Mr. Systrom and Mr. Krieger.

Facebook bought Instagram for $ 1 billion in cash and stock (although the final cost was close to $ 715 million because the share price on which part of the deal was based decreased). It was Facebook's biggest acquisition to date, and it came a month before the initial public offering of the social network.

"For years, we have focused on creating the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family," wrote Zuckerberg in an article on the blog. "Now we will be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences to share beautiful moving pictures with people based on your interests."

The agreement immediately transformed Mr Systrom and Mr Krieger into millionaires. Instagram has since been evaluated at 100 times this $ 1 billion acquisition price by Bloomberg Intelligence, a considerable return on investment on paper.

Facebook then bought Parse, a service that provides tools for mobile developers, and Oculus, a virtual reality hardware startup, which extends to new areas beyond the original social network. Mr. Zuckerberg also spent $ 19 billion to buy WhatsApp.

But Instagram remained Zuckerberg's main achievement. While Facebook saw a threat to young people leaving the network for Snapchat, a competing photo-sharing network, Instagram quickly changed and recreated one of the main features of Snapchat's online articles. Since then Instagram has grown in popularity, while Snapchat's growth has been erratic.

The departures of Mr. Systrom and Mr. Krieger create uncertainty around the application. It's hard to know who will lead the company on the departures of the founders, and whether this person can continue its long-standing momentum. Marne Levine, who was previously chief operating officer of Instagram, left her role at Instagram earlier this month to return to Facebook and lead partnerships.