The man in charge of one of Spotify’s most distinctive features is heading to Instagram.
The man behind Spotify’s Discover Weekly feature is going to Instagram
Matthew Ogle leaves after two-plus years.
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
Matthew Ogle, a product director who worked on the music service’s personalization efforts, says he’s taking a job at Facebook’s photo-sharing service.
At Spotify, Ogle was best-known as the guy behind its “Discover Weekly” feature, which generated automatic playlists for users based on their taste.
Ogle announced the move on Twitter, where he described Instagram as one of his “all-time fave services,” but didn’t spell out what he would be working on there.
Discover Weekly, along with other automated, personalized playlists like “Your Daily Mix,” have become useful tools for Spotify; partly because users actually like them, and also because they demonstrate the kind of stuff the company can build using the data it has accumulated from its 100 million-plus users.
Ogle joined Spotify in January 2015, after building This is My Jam, a small music startup. He’s leaving the company as it prepares to go public, likely later this year.
I’ve asked Ogle and Spotify for additional comment.
Update: Here’s a bit more from Ogle, delivered via Twitter DM: “I’ve long admired Instagram, so I’m thrilled to join a high-impact, fast-growing team in NYC. We’ll be working on new ways to discover, explore, and strengthen users’ relationships with the people and interests they care about the most. My work at Spotify, including Discover Weekly, was always a team effort — and the personalization and discovery group has a lot of talent and momentum right now. I can’t wait to use all the things they’ll make next.”
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
