@Jack (Dorsey) quits Instagram, placing the primary identify deal with up for grabs

The @jack deal with on Instagram is again up for grabs. Right this moment, Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, now Block CEO, introduced he has deleted his Instagram account — the one with the coveted first identify deal with. Usually, handles like these promote for 1000’s of {dollars} on the secondary market, so if the deal with turns into out there once more, somebody may make a killing by snagging it.

In a put up on decentralized social media Nostr, Dorsey shared he deleted the account after years of non-use.

“Don’t know why it took me so lengthy,” he wrote. “I feel I used to be within the first 10 accounts on the platform, and one of many first angel buyers. [Instagram co-founder] Kevin [Systrom] was our intern at Odeo,” famous Dorsey in his put up. (Odeo was the group based in 2005 by Noah Glass and Evan Williams, that later reformed because the Apparent Company which ended up changing into the birthplace of Twitter.)

Picture Credit: screenshot from Damus

Dorsey additionally shared that when Instagram was offered to Fb (now Meta), he stopped utilizing the app — a historical past that was documented in Sarah Frier’s e-book, “No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram.”

Dorsey and Systrom had been pals since working at Odeo collectively and, at one level, Twitter even tried to purchase Instagram, however was rejected. When Dorsey later came upon that Instagram was promoting to Fb — Twitter’s greatest rival on the time — for $1 billion, Dorsey stopped posting to the app, having been damage Systrom didn’t inform him straight, the e-book claims. He hadn’t posted since April 9, 2012, the e-book famous — the morning he came upon about Instagram’s sale. The picture documented an empty San Francisco bus.

However that and different pictures are misplaced to historical past, as instagaram.com/jack is a dead-end.

The timing of the account deletion is, after all, attention-grabbing, on condition that Instagram is now competing in the identical market as Twitter with its personal microblogging app, Threads. Dorsey retained a stake in Twitter, now X, after Elon Musk’s acquisition.

That mentioned, the previous Twitter CEO has backed different social networks that compete with Twitter, so it’s in all probability not bitter grapes over Threads.

As an example, Dorsey helped Twitter rival Bluesky get off the bottom, having initially incubated the mission whereas serving as Twitter’s CEO. Final 12 months, Bluesky mentioned it acquired $13 million in funding from Twitter to get began on R&D. (It has since raised extra seed funding).

Dorsey additionally backed one other decentralized networking protocol Nostr by donating round $245,000 in bitcoin. He now frequently posts to Nostr, which is accessible by shoppers just like the cell app Damus, which has since returned to the App Retailer after this summer season’s momentary ban over guidelines violations.