Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launch Rt.live, an up-to-date tracker of how fast COVID-19 is spreading in each US state
New Website From Instagram Co-Founders Tracking the Rate of COVID-19 Transmission by State Jon Fingas / Yahoo Finance : Instagram founders reunite to create a COVID-19 spread tracker Tweets: Mike Krieger / @mikeyk : Just pushed a set of visual tweaks & performance improvements to https://rt.live/. Thx to @yoavweiss for the detailed perf ideas & to @rauchg & the next.js team (ported it over to Next as part of changes) Antonio Garca Martnez / @antoniogm : Of course Silicon Valley would produce the KPI dashboard that matters (the current input value to the exponential). And of course almost nobody will cite it as it's not a simple leaderboard that can be worked into score cards and just-so stories. https://twitter.com/... Stefane Fermigier / @sfermigier : Evolution of the reproduction factor (Rt) for #COVID19 for France, based on the data from https://www.data.gouv.fr/... and the work of @kevin at https://rt.live/ https://twitter.com/... Mansueto Institute / @miurbanchicago : .@Kevin and team at the COVID Tracking Project are doing amazing work visualizing each state's COVID-19 Rt, or effective reproduction number, based on @BettencourtLuis's epidemiological estimation method. Check it out on http://rt.live/. http://systrom.com/... Jason Stephens / @jpstephens : @NateSilver538 Have you seen this site? It tracks the states r values in each state in real time https://rt.live/ Brad Feld / @bfeld : This is a phenomenal R(t) daily visualization by State created by @kevin and @mikeyk - https://rt.live/ - by looking at R(t) by State over the past two weeks, you can see the dramatic impact of the stay at home approach. Carlos del Rio / @carlosdelrio7 : According to this tracker, despite #socialdistancing GA had the highest Ro at 1.51. Remember when Ro > 1 there is epidemic transmission. GA dipped < 1 from April 10-13 but now up again to > 1.5. With that Ro and limited access to testing we are not ready! https://rt.live/ Hoon Lee / @misterhoonlee : Social distancing is working. Keep it up. #StayHome #Covid19 https://twitter.com/... @kottke : A simple site built by the Instagram founders that shows the current Rt value for Covid-19 for all 50 US states, updated daily. https://rt.live/ @hrbrmstr : http://rt.live/ (oh these crazy modern TLDs) has an interesting model (https://github.com/...) estimating COVID-19 Rt (effective reproduction number) by state. https://twitter.com/... @expresstechie : This app developed by #Instagram's founders aims to track the spread of #COVID19 globally, here's how https://indianexpress.com/... @bloombergquint : While the pandemic is global, the website is more useful to look at the infection rate from a local angle. https://www.bloombergquint.com/ ... @ryan_lanham : @MaxCRoser I'm underwhelmed by the data... but if you are not aware of it... you should follow/mirror: https://rt.live/ Emily Chang / @emilychangtv : If your state is +1, the virus is still growing quickly (GA, CA, NY, etc.) If -1, the virus is under control (VT, ID). More on the new live tracking site released by Instagram's co-founders @kevin and @mikeyk https://www.bloomberg.com/... @thebestsophist : if half the technologists spent even a tenth of their time figuring out what would actually help people before they went building shit like this... https://twitter.com/... @hypervisible : “While neither man has a background in health or epidemiology, the same statistical modeling that applies to fast company growth might also be useful for tracking virus growth.” Stop bros. Just stop. https://www.bloomberg.com/... Ian Mulvany / @ianmulvany : This is great, is love to see this for Europe, and for regions in the UK https://rt.live/ - tracker of the R rate for covid by US state. Jackson Kernion / @jacksonkernion : @Noahpinion Using Rt Live and doing some back-of-envelope math, I think the West Coast states (CA/OR/WA) can have a stable, rolling 7-day Rt abg below 1.0 in as little as 4 weeks. It, of course, may take longer. But that's the hurdle I'm looking for right now. https://rt.live/ Ray Muzyka / @raymuzyka : Relevant for US folks: up-to-date values for Rt, a key measure of how fast Covid grows; Rt = average number of people who become infected by an infectious person. If Rt is >1.0, the virus will spread quickly. When Rt is <1.0, the virus will stop spreading. https://rt.live/ Sebastian / @sebmck : @slightlylate I don't usually do this, but it's about public health and this site is getting a lot of press and HOLY !*#$ WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE GOOGLE COMMUNITY!? https://news.google.com/... literally has a lighthouse score of 2 and hits document complete at 13s https://www.webpagetest.org/ ... https://twitter.com/... Alex Russell / @slightlylate : I don't usually do this, but it's about public health and this site is getting a lot of press and HOLY !*#$ WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE REACT COMMUNITY!?: https://www.webpagetest.org/ ... Joshua Batson / @thebasepoint : A public dashboard modeling the reproductive rate for #COVID19. There's a lot to like about the implementation: open code, open data, clear viz, based on a published model. I also have some concerns (and suggestions!) about the model and its uses. A thread. 1/n https://twitter.com/... Emily Chang / @emilychangtv : Here's Instagram co-founder @kevin's new virus site that takes his recent models and updates them live in real time, in collaboration with @mikeyk — http://rt.live/ https://twitter.com/... Robert Wright / @robertwrighter : Cool site (created by founders of Instagram) that tracks estimated rate of covid transmission in each state: https://rt.live/ Look at how much progress there was between two weeks ago and last week. (A number below 1 means the virus is losing ground.) https://twitter.com/... @bjorn : Why the fuck would you name this http://rt.live/ https://twitter.com/... @joshconstine : Instagram's founders just launched their first project together since Fb. Here's the first look at their COVID-19 infectiousness chart https://techcrunch.com/... Kevin Systrom / @kevin : Today we're launching http://rt.live/ See how quickly #COVID19 is growing in each US state. Rt is the metric we need to watch.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the first public product from Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger since their 2018 resignation from Instagram, which handed the app to Adam Mosseri (announced weeks later). Rather than returning to consumer social, the pair's debut is a state-by-state dashboard of COVID-19's transmission rate (Rt), built and iterated in the open — Krieger was already pushing performance fixes and a Next.js port within days of launch.
The choice matters for what came after: the same founders went on to form a venture around next-gen apps, starting with Artifact, their TikTok-like news app. Rt.live reads as the opening move in a post-Instagram playbook — small teams shipping fast on public-interest data rather than rebuilding a platform.
First-order effects
- State-level decision-makers and the public get a single comparable metric — how fast the virus is spreading in each US state — at a moment when official dashboards report case counts but not transmission rates.
- Krieger's same-week visual and performance updates show the site operating as a live product under real traffic, not a static research page.
Second-order effects
- Independent trackers publishing cleaner metrics than government sites put pressure on state health agencies to match the format or cede the reference point to a private dashboard.
- Antonio García Martínez's framing of Rt.live as 'the KPI dashboard that matters' signals Silicon Valley adopting Rt as the headline number, which shapes which interventions get argued about.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, ex-platform founders become recurring suppliers of civic data infrastructure — small teams filling gaps left by slow-moving public institutions, as later confirmed by the pivot toward Artifact's news aggregation.
- Private dashboards becoming de facto policy references raises an unresolved question about accountability when unofficial numbers drive official decisions.
The trend: Post-Instagram founders are channeling their reputations into lightweight, fast-shipping data products for public problems, a path that runs from Rt.live to Artifact.