Post by Forever Sunshine on Dec 20, 2012 23:57:34 GMT -5
I'm just as reactionary and just as outraged as the next Internet user when I learn that a service I've been using for free is going to start selling my information to market researchers or excerpting my posts and pictures for its clients' advertisements or charging me good money to communicate with an online cohort that might have taken me years to build.
Such is the case with Instagram, a free photo-sharing app for smart phones. Millions of people have downloaded the free app and have been busy taking and sharing photos of themselves and their fascinations.
Instagram has risen to the level of a Twitter as far as the culture around it is concerned. It has spawned a new visual language, a new etiquette of sharing and an outpouring of creativity in the form of contests, collaborative art exhibits and personal expression.
Instagram got so popular so fast that Facebook took notice and purchased the company for a billion dollars -- (yes, $1 billion) -- to bolster its own smart phone presence shortly before its IPO.
The problem with being bought for a billion dollars is that eventually you have to start showing the kinds of returns expected for a billion dollar company. That means either charging users for the service or, as in the case of Instagram, selling the users' data. Instagram plans to use the photos people upload in targeted ads -- much as Facebook now uses our friends' updates as the substance for advertisements called sponsored stories, as in: "John says: My Starbucks coffee tastes great today."
So now, presumably, John's picture of Starbucks will serve that same purpose -- creating a contextual advertisement. Instead of simply uploading and distributing our photos, we are working for the man.
www.cnn.com/2012/12/20/opinion/rushkoff-instagram-users/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7
Such is the case with Instagram, a free photo-sharing app for smart phones. Millions of people have downloaded the free app and have been busy taking and sharing photos of themselves and their fascinations.
Instagram has risen to the level of a Twitter as far as the culture around it is concerned. It has spawned a new visual language, a new etiquette of sharing and an outpouring of creativity in the form of contests, collaborative art exhibits and personal expression.
Instagram got so popular so fast that Facebook took notice and purchased the company for a billion dollars -- (yes, $1 billion) -- to bolster its own smart phone presence shortly before its IPO.
The problem with being bought for a billion dollars is that eventually you have to start showing the kinds of returns expected for a billion dollar company. That means either charging users for the service or, as in the case of Instagram, selling the users' data. Instagram plans to use the photos people upload in targeted ads -- much as Facebook now uses our friends' updates as the substance for advertisements called sponsored stories, as in: "John says: My Starbucks coffee tastes great today."
So now, presumably, John's picture of Starbucks will serve that same purpose -- creating a contextual advertisement. Instead of simply uploading and distributing our photos, we are working for the man.
www.cnn.com/2012/12/20/opinion/rushkoff-instagram-users/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7
© 2011 -- 
Crap, the Name Escapes Me 
