Review No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram
The main idea of the book is well summarized in a quote by a former Instagram executive in chapter 10, which says “Facebook was like the big sister that wants to dress you up for the party but does not want you to be prettier than she is.”
This quote gives you a good idea of what the book is about and you don’t have to read the whole book to understand it.
My personal takeaway from reading the book is that Facebook acquired Instagram because they were afraid that Instagram would become more popular than Facebook and take over their dominance in the social media world.
The founder of Instagram, Kevin Systrom, agreed to the acquisition and worked with Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, to make Instagram grow bigger.
However, Systrom thought that Zuckerberg would be act as a board member for Instagram and he would be in charge of running the company, but Zuckerberg saw Instagram as a department within Facebook and wanted Systrom to follow his orders.
This caused many disagreements between the two and Zuckerberg didn’t agree with all the steps Systrom took to grow Instagram because he thought it would harm Facebook.
In the end, the many disagreements between the two led to the departure of the Instagram founders in 2019.
In conclusion, Mark Zuckerberg knows that Facebook is in danger of becoming the next Yahoo! in the near future but he won’t admit it.
However, he is visionary enough to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp to keep Facebook’s grip on the social media business.
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