No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram

by Sarah Frier

Mark Zuckerberg started referring to any Twitteresque posts on Facebook as “public content,” and started saying on earnings calls with investors that he wanted to make this type of posting a priority for the company. He wanted Facebook to be better at Twitter than Twitter was. A bonus of this strategy was it gave people more things to post and talk about on Facebook. With every year people were on Facebook, they were broadening their friend networks. It turned out that even if “connecting the world” was a great business objective, synonymous with growth, the side effect was that everyone’s feed was full of loose acquaintances. Almost a decade after the company’s founding, Facebook users were less willing to post about their more intimate observations and life events for this wider audience. Facebook was still adding users and revenue at an impressive clip—but Mark Zuckerberg liked to look at growth problems looming around the corner, and solve them before they became serious.