American entrepreneur who co-founded Instagram with Mike Krieger — serving as CEO — building it from a photo-sharing app into one of the most influential social media platforms in history; sold to Facebook for $1 billion in 2012 and left Facebook in 2018 over disagreements with Zuckerberg about editorial independence.
Created the mobile photo-sharing category and pioneered the Stories format (copied from Snapchat) that became universal — Instagram's commitment to aesthetic quality (filters, grid layout) differentiated it in a crowded market; Systrom's departure from Facebook over creative independence highlighted the tension between platform acquisition and product vision.
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