Why I welcome the new Instagram Terms of Service

If everybody leaves there will be less pictures of cats, and food I don’t care about.

Leaving more room for my photos of coffee…

… and my daughter…

 

…and my wife.

But mostly of coffee…

But seriously. I like Instagram.

Its social networking meets fauxtography nature is perfect for producing the picture content for my coffee blog. Its hashtagability means it’s perfect for pulling together real time user-generated picture content at an event.

Liking Instagram means I want Instagram to survive. Especially now they have great web profiles. Instagram surviving means they have to make money.

How did people think they were going to do that if not through the content that we produce using their app, and store on their databases, with all sorts of great metadata and user generated responses to brands and places. That’s where the value in their service is, so it makes sense that that’s where they’ll try to become profitable.

Instagram says things aren’t as bad as the interwebs made out anyway, and The Verge has a great piece showing what they can and can’t do, legally speaking.

This Funny or Die response is probably my favourite.

Comments

AndrewF says:

I still don’t like giving big companies the right to sell photos I’ve taken. Flickr needs to capitalise on this right now.

Nathan Campbell says:

I like to think of it as “I’ll use Instagram to take photos of things that I want to see succeed, such that I take part in their marketing” – it’s altruistic.

AndrewF says:

I’d prefer to pay a subscription (a la Flickr) and retain control over my intellectual property.