Winner of the 2020 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award * Named âBest Book of the Yearâ by Fortune, The Financial Times, The Economist, Inc. Magazine, and NPR
In this âsequel to The Social Networkâ (The New York Times), award-winning reporter Sarah Frier reveals the never-before-told story of how Instagram became the most culturally defining app of the decade.
âThe most enrapturing book about Silicon Valley drama since Hatching Twitterâ (Fortune), No Filter âpairs phenomenal in-depth reporting with explosive storytelling that gets to the heart of how Instagram has shaped our lives, whether you use the app or notâ (The New York Times).
In 2010, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger released a photo-sharing app called Instagram, with one simple but irresistible feature: it would make anything you captured look more beautiful. The cofounders cultivated a community of photographers and artisans around the app, and it quickly went mainstream. In less than two years, it caught Facebookâs attention: Mark Zuckerberg bought the company for a historic $1 billion when Instagram had only thirteen employees.
That might have been the end of a classic success story. But the cofounders stayed on, trying to maintain Instagramâs beauty, brand, and cachet, considering their app a separate company within the social networking giant. They urged their employees to make changes only when necessary, resisting Facebookâs grow-at-all-costs philosophy in favor of a strategy that highlighted creativity and celebrity. Just as Instagram was about to reach a billion users, Facebookâs CEO Mark Zuckerbergâonce supportive of the foundersâ autonomyâbegan to feel threatened by Instagramâs success.
Frier draws on unprecedented accessâfrom the founders of Instagram, as well as employees, executives, and competitors; Anna Wintour of Vogue; Kris Jenner of the Kardashian-Jenner empire; and a plethora of influencers worldwideâto show how Instagram has fundamentally changed the way we show, eat, travel, and communicate, all while fighting to preserve the values which contributed to the companyâs success. âDeeply reported and beautifully writtenâ (Nick Bilton, Vanity Fair), No Filter examines how Instagramâs dominance acts as a lens into our society today, highlighting our fraught relationship with technology, our desire for perfection, and the battle within tech for its most valuable commodity: our attention.