Two Years After Leaving Facebook, What Did the Founder of Instagram Do?

As of now, the cumulative number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States has exceeded 790,000, and technology companies have been actively providing various assistance. The two founders of Instagram recently developed a website that visualizes the average number of COVID-19 infections in real time, allowing people to have a panoramic view of the spread of the epidemic in each state.

On April 10, 2012, Instagram, a startup with only 13 employees, was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion, which was Facebook's largest acquisition in history at the time.

The founders of Instagram, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, were only 28 and 25 years old respectively at the time. This became a myth that inspired more entrepreneurs at the time.

In 2018, the two left Facebook due to internal conflicts.

Now, two years after leaving Facebook,The founders of Instagram have teamed up again to develop a new product, this time to help the United States fight the epidemic.

Founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger recently launched a new website Rt.live,Unlike general statistics websites that only provide raw COVID-19 data, this website uses statistical methods to measure the spread of the virus.

"We built Rt.live because we believe the basic reproduction number, Rt, is one of the best ways to understand how COVID-19 spreads," said founder Krieger.

Rt.live was created to monitor the spread of the epidemic

The Rt tracked by the website is the basic reproduction number in epidemiology.It is used to measure the average number of people infected by a contagious disease.

If the Rt value is higher above 1, it means that COVID-19 is spreading faster in the population, while if it is lower than 1, it means that the virus is receding.

Rt.live, developed by Kevin and Mike, displays the Rt value intuitively, allowing everyone to see that the "stay-at-home order" policy can effectively reduce the spread of the virus, thereby persuading people to stay indoors.

The site allows users to filter by region, so you can seeWestern states have done a better job of controlling COVID-19 than Southern states, and more and more states are showing signs of improvement.However, the average situation in states that have not implemented a "stay-at-home order" is not optimistic.

To give a specific example, Rt.live shows that due to aggressive social isolation orders in New York State, Rt has dropped to 0.54.

The site's data comes from the COVID-19 tracking project, and Kevin has uploaded Rt.live's modeling system to GitHub.

GitHub address:https://github.com/k-sys/covid-19

In addition, this tool can also serve as a reference for people in various states of the United States to return to work, and make corresponding strategies at any time according to changes in the situation.

Instagram founder, crossing over to engage in medical field?

Many people will be surprised to see this news: For a photo app giant, establishing a medical statistics website seems a bit cross-border?

But in fact, the two are not as unrelated as they seem.

Kevin has been studyingViral spread,Because this is one of the things he did to help Instagram grow so quickly.

Krieger said:“Kevin studies how to calculate Rt using open source data every day and publishes his analysis notes.”

They hope to visualize the data so that anyone can see how their state is doing in curbing the spread of the epidemic.

“As states decide whether and how to open up, they will have to carefully manage their infection rates, and we hope tools like Rt.live can help in that regard,” Krieger said.

On March 19, Krieger began publishing his own statistical model to track coronavirus infections and deaths. “Kevin and I had been discussing ways to work together, and my first job was to do data visualization/analysis at Meebo,” Krieger said.

While Kevin was analyzing the data, Krieger built the website.These were also the front-end and back-end roles they previously played at Instagram respectively.

They have created miracles before, so what about this collaboration?

Kevin and Mike's success is not accidental. A good academic background, strong self-learning ability, and a keen sense of user preferences are all factors that contribute to Instagram's success.

Kevin Systrom, who comes from a well-off family, loves playing computer games. In 2002, he enrolled at Stanford University and received a bachelor's degree in management science and engineering in 2006.

Mike Krieger moved to California from São Paulo, Brazil in 2004 to attend Stanford University.

Kevin, who never received formal programming education, built some websites by himself during college.hisI learned all the programming knowledge by myself in the evenings.

After graduation, Kevin developed an HTML5-based check-in app called Burbn, and invited Krieger, whom he had known since college, to join. After working together, the two decided to transform Burbn into a software for sharing and adding filters to photos for free.

They developed the first version of Instagram in just 8 weeks.Since then, Instagram has rocketed to the top of the charts of major app stores, which exceeded the expectations of the two founders. "We knew it would be successful, but we didn't expect it to be so successful."

Suddenly, it has been nearly 10 years since Instagram was launched, and the two entrepreneurial partners have joined forces again.

Krieger seems very happy about this collaboration:“It’s great to work together again - we can turn ideas into products in a few days because we have shared memories and chemistry.”

The two great people may not expect to create a "viral" product like Instagram when they join forces this time, but they hope that Rt.live can prevent the spread of the real virus to a certain extent and end the epidemic as soon as possible.

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