Best Overall: No Filter: Instagram‘s Inside Story
by Sarah Frier No Filter: Instagram‘s Inside Story. ranks as the best overall book on our list of finance books. The title doesn’t do the book justice, because it’s so much more than a book about two smart tech guys creating a new app and then selling it to Facebook.
Through her well-written and reported prose, Frier, Bloomberg’s managing editor of Big Tech coverage, addresses the importance of social media – how it can alter election results, impact people’s self-esteem, self and the behavior of followers who do not. t have the seemingly perfect lives of celebrities and influencers, and generally hurt society when it claims to do otherwise. It also takes us inside Facebook, specifically its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, whom Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom has called the most strategic thinker he’s ever met. A gripping read.
“If Facebook was about friendship and Twitter was about opinions, then Instagram was about experiences…somebody could be interested in the visual experiences of anyone, anywhere in the world,” Frier writes in his account of app envy among Silicon Valley executives. In 2010, Instagram co-founders Mike Krieger and Systrom embraced the reach of their online creation, a social media app for photos and videos that led Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to the acquire for $1 billion two years later.
Systrom stayed after the sale and tried to preserve the app’s original intent of a path station for beautiful images, but clashed with Zuckerberg, who wanted to grow Instagram, while preventing him from ‘overshadow the parent. “Facebook was like the big sister who wants to dress you up for a party, but doesn’t want you to look prettier than she is,” an unnamed former Instagram executive quoted in the book said. Instagram is also doing poorly, as its images of “perfect” women have prompted some of its followers to seek cosmetic surgery, and opioids have been sold on its site for several years.
How Silicon Valley works is fully reported, thanks to Frier’s in-depth interviews with venture capitalists and tech executives, as well as influencers and Instagram celebrities. The accolades poured in for No filter: It was named Best Business Book of 2020 by the FinancialTimes and McKinsey Business Book, and received equally enthusiastic attention from Fortune, The Economist, Inc.and NPR.
