For a long time most of the world envied Mark Zuckerberg, his partners and their financial success with Facebook and then came Instagram and Mark Zuckerberg had to have a piece of the pie that was set to overtake Facebook’s popularity. Zuckerberg paid $1 billion for Instagram and now he gets to still be the guy everyone talks about. However, Instagram founders Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom are new to filthy rich elite and also have an interesting story to tell. It took them all of just over a year to become billionaires. That has to be some sort of record.
Background
Mike and Kevin are two computer software engineers who graduated from Stanford in 2006 and founded Instagram in 2010. Mike, full-name Michel, is originally from São Paulo in Brazil and came to the United States in 2004 to study computer and cognitive science. He met Kevin at Stanford. Kevin was studying Management science and engineering.
Kevin is very passionate about computer science and several years before Instagram pictures were even a twinkle in the eye, Kevin interned at Odeo, the same company that brought Twitter to the world, and then he worked at Google in the gmail and Google Reader departments.
The Instagram application is a free photo sharing program that gives users a chance to add a filter to their photos and share them on Facebook. The whole idea has taken off like a rocket and everyone from celebrities to teens are using the application for just about every photo taken. Instagram currently has over 30 million registered account holders with each day adding more to their burgeoning member accounts list.
The White House billed Instagram as the fastest growing social start-up currently, in the United States. That is quite something coming from the President and First Lady who are keenly involved in most things happening in their democratic kingdom of America.
Facebook’s Latest Acquisition
April 2012 marked a changing in the financial winds for the founders of Instagram when Facebook paid
a healthy sum of a billion dollars to take-over the Instagram operation. The buy-out includes moving the 13 Instagram staff members to the Facebook premises where they will assist Zuckerberg on new photo applications that he wants to implement into Facebook. Pretty soon we’ll be seeing the Instagram application on Facebook. It is quite cool that all the wicked applications will now be rolled into one. In the meantime, Kevin and Mike – previously of Instagram fame – can now sit on their luxurious yachts with their expensive computers and plot how to take over the world by way of some new program.
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About the Author
Vida Denning is a keen writer still familiarizing herself with Instagram. It looks like a ton of fun. If she could find time between looking for executive office space in serviced offices Singapore, perhaps she could expand her album.
