Anticipation Awaits Instagram Co-Founders' Next Moves

“Instagram’s origin story combines pivoting, serendipity and astute reading of user habits.”

While the filters were the hook, the ways that Instagram interpreted and responded to how its users engaged with it would set it apart. As social media services try to balance an open-to-all policy with the safety of users, Instagram has been enterprising with its use of tools to moderate comments and judge inappropriate content. That proactive approach has been present from its early days, when admins would manually delete and block trollish comments and repeat offenders.

As the service grew, that became impossible, so the company created ways to automate the process. Ultimately, it was able to give users a way to block comments containing keywords, including emoji, that would signal a potentially upsetting or unwanted response. Having those tools at hand, and having that policy and philosophy in place from the beginning, gave Instagram a head start on handling the kinds of harassment and fraudulent use that Twitter and Facebook have publicly struggled with.

Some of its other tools have been geared towards user privacy, including the ability to archive old posts from public view, share stories with limited groups of friends, send messages that disappear after viewing, and turn off comments for posts. This level of customization allows the rare opportunity for a woman to publicly post a selfie without the risk of unwanted, unsolicited comments on her appearance. It also allows users to create a smaller, more private and more ephemeral experience for themselves, with a great deal of control over how their posts are viewed.

None of that was accidental, which speaks to the founders’ early intentions to make it a nice place to spend time. While it’s impossible to know what a service will become as its users make it their own, it is possible to decide how it should feel to use it. In an interview last year, Krieger said “... it wasn’t that we thought we could fight every single battle, but we were trying to set a tone. I think the tone you set early really matters.”

Systrom has been fairly candid publicly with his personal concerns about how social media works, and how it impacts its users. During an interview at an event hosted by the tech publication The Information, he said that he thought it was unhealthy for platforms to increase ads and notifications to boost earnings. And in a conversation reported by Kara Swisher in The New York Times, he emphasized how little the effects of these platforms are understood, comparing them to gravity before Newton. “There are certain rules that govern it, and we have to make it our priority to understand the rules, or we cannot control it,” Systrom told Swisher.

How Systrom and Krieger plan to proceed next, whether that involves a way to understand the physics of social media or a way to nurture it as a kinder place, is a true billion-dollar question.

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger will take part in an Interactive Keynote Conversation with Josh Constine of TechCrunch at the 2019 SXSW Conference.

SXSW will be held March 8-17, 2019. The Interactive Badge gets you primary access to all SXSW Conference Interactive & Convergence Tracks, as well as secondary access to most Music and Film programming. See you in March!