The other day, while scrolling through my Instagram news feed, I was horrified to come across a post from Instagram stating that ads will appear in my news feed in the near future. Just terrific. Instagram hopped on the old sell-out bandwagon, taking a first-class seat right next to Facebook. The app was already worth one billion dollars (New York Times), but apparently that wasn't enough for the people who run it. It seems sort of ironic how social media sites, whose entire purpose is to create a personal experience online are invading user's private sense of community by adding advertisements. That was the nice thing about Instagram, and that's why I started using Instagram much more frequently than Facebook. Since Facebook starting implicating advertisements, the site has slowly grown into a jumbled mess of companies shoving there products down my throat. Whereas Instagram is clean cut and really personal. It shows me what I want to see, and I'm in control. That's whats great about it. And Instagram claims to show adds that are unique to the user. But many companies have already created their own accounts, so if I ever wanted to check out a certain product it would only be a few clicks away. I'd be much more interested that way, rather than an ad jumping up on me unexpectedly. Many other users seem to be outraged as well, leaving comments on Instagram's announcement like "Ads! Omfg. I'm out, no more Instagram" or "The day this place gets ads is the day I delete my account."
It's funny because in the Social Network, the movie based off the rise of Facebook (who now owns Instagram), says "You don't want to ruin it with ads because ads aren't cool." Weird, right?
Will you continue using Instagram when it gets ads? How will they change your experience on Instagram? Feel free to leave your thoughts below.
Instagram value: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/facebook-buys-instagram-for-1-billion/
Image: http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/24/first-look-at-instagram-ads/
Hi Sean,
ReplyDeleteYour post reminds me a bit of a photographer who wrote an article touting IG as the "pure meat without the bun or condiments of Facebook"! :)
It's a good start, but the post doesn't directly interact with your linked-to articles. Pull a quote from those articles and analyze it. I've read them myself and the story is much more complicated than what you portray. For example, Instagram might be worth a lot of $$, but that doesn't mean they make a lot of $$. Unless users are willing to pay for the app, it cannot sustain itself financially.
Besides that, you might explore some American themes of entrepreneurship and the profit motive. But right now, this is more of an interesting observation and rant than a blog post.
How come so few posts, btw??