Greg's Corner

Founder revolts hit Facebook hard

Instagram is the widely popular photo-sharing app prized by most younger people. Whatsapp is the most popular messaging app in the world even though its popularity is not reflected here in the US. Both apps were developed on their own and eventually were bought by Facebook for billions of dollars. Now, the founders of both apps may be regretting their decisions to sell to Facebook.

On this past Monday, Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger announced that they would be leaving Facebook in the upcoming weeks. It’s been alleged that they’re leaving Facebook after Facebook reportedly stopped promoting Instagram on the main Facebook site and saw Instagram more as an adversary rather than a partner. Whatsapp founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum left Facebook last year. Earlier this week, Acton took to the media regretting his decision to sell to Facebook by saying “I sold my users’ privacy to a larger benefit.” Acton was said to be so upset with Facebook that he resigned before his stock in Facebook could be fully vested which cost him $850 million.

So you would think that with these incidents that Facebook may start looking at their internal infrastructure to keep key figures from defecting. You’d be wrong. Instead, a top Facebook executive by the name of David Marcus fired back at Acton calling him low-class…

“Lastly — call me old fashioned,” he wrote. “But I find attacking the people and company that made you a billionaire, and went to an unprecedented extent to shield and accommodate you for years, low-class. It’s actually a whole new standard of low-class.”

If this is the official attitude of the Facebook faithful then it’s no wonder why app developers are leaving in droves.