Thread by @alexeheath

I’ve heard @kevin publicly talk about Instagram’s copy & paste of Snapchat Stories many times. But at #SXSW just now, he made the point that they were observing people linking to their Snap accounts in Instagram.

“It was clear people were trying to bridge the two products.”

... So Instagram bridged it for them! And @kevin notes it obviously worked. Now Instagram is trying features like “Close Friends” in Stories to try and keep the friend graph as controllable as possible. This is the inherent problem of every public, broadcast network. (RIP Path)

It’s very clear in this keynote that @kevin and @mikeyk are not going to disparage their ex employer. But reading between the lines, Systrom doesn’t seem to be fully onboard with Facebook’s plan to unify its messaging apps. Closest he gets is saying “bravo” for making a bold bet.

This may be their first time together in an interview since leaving Facebook, but Instagram’s cofounders are not revealing their next venture today @ #SXSW

“We’re giving ourselves the time to get curious about things again” - @mikeyk