Tuesday, December 23, 2025 | 10:24 PM ISTहिंदी में पढें
Business Standard
Notification Icon
userprofile IconSearch

Instagram, a cautionary tale

The key protagonist of this story is Kevin Systrom, a Stanford graduate, who built a mobile website called Burbn in 2009

As apps such as Instagram and Facebook become part of our daily lives and culture, this carefully researched book by Ms Frier offers a behind-the-scenes peek into the companies that run these apps
premium

As apps such as Instagram and Facebook become part of our daily lives and culture, this carefully researched book by Ms Frier offers a behind-the-scenes peek into the companies that run these apps

Sona Maniar
Sometime in April 2012, cofounder of Instagram Kevin Systrom gathered his team at 8 a m in the start-up’s Silicon Valley office to make an important announcement — that the company was being acquired by Facebook for a whopping $1 billion. Employees of the tiny start-up were stunned.  Some reacted with gasps and surprise, others with laughter and tears. But mostly, they were in disbelief that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, was paying such a steep price for a photo-posting platform that had, till date, managed to generate a great deal of hype but no revenue.

This incident marks a