Social media giant Facebook is becoming more and more close-knit with its 2012 acquisition, Instagram. The latter has just ended a nine-month search for its chief operating officer by employing Facebook veteran Justin Osofsky. He joins an office staffed by numerous ex-Facebookers, including Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri who has been rebuilding the visual platform’s top team over the past six months. There’s good reason for this deep integration – a year ago, Instagram was estimated to be worth around $100 billion. That’s about 20% of Facebook’s total.
Despite a number of recent headwinds for Big Tech, Facebook’s share price is still up by 26% year to date
Source: Yahoo Finance
Osofsky has 11 years of experience working for Facebook, where he was most recently involved in safety and security efforts following the 2016 US Presidential Election. Over the years, he has managed a diverse set of practises including everything from content reviewing to mergers and acquisitions to media partnerships. He’ll be replacing the company’s last chief operating officer, Marne Levine who also moved sideways (although in the opposite direction) to Facebook.
With the departure of Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, and the appointment of Mosseri and Osofsky (as well as a number of other Facebook long-timers), the two companies are drawing closer together culturally. That might not be a bad thing – chances are high that Instagram, which is at an all-time popularity high, will soon start contributing an outsized portion of Facebook’s revenue growth.
In any case, the learning goes both ways. In a recent email to staff, Mosseri made plain how impressed he was with Instagram’s way of doing things. He wrote: “These last months have been intense, but they’ve also been exciting. With Mike and Kevin leaving I was concerned about how warm the internal reception would be to me stepping into this role. I know some people still have questions, but I’ve been really heartened by people’s support. The culture here is one of support, in addition to one of simplicity and craft, and I deeply appreciate that.”
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Dominion holds Facebook in its Global Trends Ecommerce Fund.
Author: Theo Leworthy
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