Instagram head Adam Mosseri is set to move to London as part of a strategic change by the US social media platform.
Following the move, Instagram’s base of operations will be the British capital, a major hub for Instagram parent Meta’s operations outside of the US.
Instagram opened its UK office in King’s Cross, London earlier this year. Mosseri will ramp up hiring in the company’s London base in a boost to the city’s tech footprint.
Mosseri’s move to London is said to be temporary by those close to the situation, according to the Financial Times.
The switch will be seen as a vote of confidence in the capital, where Google is spending an estimated $1bn to construct a one-million-square-foot office in King’s Cross.
Instagram video backlash
The move comes during a difficult period for Instagram’s management. The company saw a significant backlash from its community – including several members of the Kardashian-Jenner family – after pivoting the platform to focus more on short-form video content in the style of TikTok.
While the platform has been reportedly losing users to TikTok, Mosseri was pressured to revert back to a focus on pictures shared by friends and family over suggested short-form videos.
Meanwhile, parent company Meta announced last week that its quarterly revenues declined in a historic first for the Silicon Valley giant.
Meta’s problems have been echoed by a number of major figures in US tech. Google owner Alphabet, Apple, and Amazon have all to some degree fallen victim to the macroeconomic downturn.
Problems in established US tech have made the major UK-based investment fund Blue Whale – worth £850m –ditch longstanding holdings in the likes of Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta, revealed by the fund’s manager Stephen Yiu in an interview with The Financial Times.
“The reason we’ve now exited is because they’re being impacted by bigger macro issues, mainly inflation and the squeeze on consumers’ disposable income,” explained Yiu.
Blue Whale still, however, holds stock in Microsoft and Nvidia.
