Thursday, August 2, 2018

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom on winning the Stories war

Kevin Systrom, CEO of Instagram at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, CA

Two years ago today, Instagram introduced its clone of Snapchat Stories: a feed of photos and videos that disappear 24 hours after they are posted. The average Instagram user was posting fewer times per month than they once did, and Snapchat was ascendant. Cut to today, and the situation has reversed. Instagram Stories now has 400 million users per month — 100 million more people than even used Instagram in 2016. Snapchat’s growth quickly slowed to a crawl, and the company’s long-term hopes now rest largely on whether it can successfully transform itself into a hardware company.

For Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s co-founder and CEO, the second birthday of the great Stories heist comes as a vindication. “It really goes against the idea that...

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