Source: Taylor Hill / Getty

Silicon Valley was rocked yesterday (Sept.24) with the news of Instagram’s co-founders officially stepping down from the popular photo-sharing app.

You can now add Instagram’s Chief Executive Officer Kevin Systrom and Chief Technical Officer Mike Krieger to the growing list of CEOs leaving their companies after Facebook purchased them. The move comes after Bloomberg reported tension between the two men and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Systrom confirmed their exit from Instagram in a statement revealing “we’re planning on leaving Instagram to explore our curiosity and creativity again.”

“Mike and I are grateful for the last eight years at Instagram and six years with the Facebook team. We’ve grown from 13 people to over a thousand with offices around the world, all while building products used and loved by a community of over one billion. We’re now ready for our next chapter.”

Systrom and Krieger join Jan Koum, the founder of the messaging tool WhatsApp who also left the company earlier this year after being acquired by Facebook. Koum made his exit amid concerns about the amount of data the social media platform was collecting from users.

Will be interesting to see the direction Instagram goes with their departures.

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Photo: Taylor Hill / Getty