Facebook moves former head of news Mosseri into Instagram hot seat
Current Instagram vice president of product Adam Mosseri will take the reins as head of Instagram, departing co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger announced on Monday.
Mosseri joined the Facebook behemoth in 2008 as a designer, and worked his way up into the role of Facebook head of news, where he had to deal with the fallout of accusations that Facebook did not do enough about fighting fake news and other misinformation that fills up the social network. Mosseri recently switched across to Instagram to take on the mantle of vice president of product.
"We are thrilled to hand over the reins to a product leader with a strong design background and a focus on craft and simplicity -- as well as a deep understanding of the importance of community," Systrom and Krieger wrote in a blog post.
"Since we announced our departure, many people have asked us what we hope for the future of Instagram. To us, the most important thing is keeping our community -- all of you -- front and center in all that Instagram does. We believe that Adam will hold true to these values, and that Instagram will continue to thrive."
The new head will be tasked with rebuilding the company's executive team, and will hire new heads of engineering, product, and operations.
Also read: Don't weep for the founders who took Zuckerberg's money
Systrom and Krieger said last week that they were leaving the company they founded to "explore our curiosity and creativity again".
"Mike and I are grateful for the last eight years at Instagram and six years with the Facebook team," Systrom wrote.
"We've grown from 13 people to over a thousand, with offices around the world, all while building products used and loved by a community of over one billion. We're now ready for our next chapter."
The pair of fellow Stanford alums founded Instagram in 2010. Facebook acquired Instagram two years later for $1 billion -- and it has since grown to a community of more than 1 billion monthly users.
Late last week, Facebook revealed a massive security breach that hit at least 50 million of its users. The attacks was accomplished by stealing access tokens used in its "View As" feature for checking how profiles look to others.
Facebook was subsequently sued in California by two plantiffs that are seeking class action status.
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