This book was a long time coming for me as a avid user of Instagram. It was fascinating to see the decision process behind the features that I use.

From the outside silicon valley looked like it was run by geniuses. From the inside, it was clear everyone was vulnerable, like he was, just figuring it out as they went along

The technical tools to manage accounts were still scrappy -or non existent. One day that winter Scooter Braun sounded an alarm to Instagram: Bieber was locked out of his app. But Instagram didn’t have a reliable system for resetting passwords. They told Braun they could do it over the phone, but Bieber would need to verify his identity. “All right” Braun said, “Justin’s going to call you guys.” Richardson picked up “Hey, this is Justin” he said. There were no security questions prepared, so that declaration would have to be enough proof of identity.

As he asked more questions and heard their stories and learned of their insecurities, he realized that everyone at the party was just trying to be better at their jobs.

Data was religion at Facebook, but never provided the perfect picture in terms of user behaviour. It could tell you what people were doing, but not necessarily why.

Clayton Christensen’s “jobs to be done” theory of product development”, which states consumers “hire” a product to do a certain task, and that it’s builders should be thinking about that clear purpose when they build.

If journalism is the first rough draft of history, books build on that important work to propose a second draft