The release of Instagram’s new privacy policy today threw users into a veritable tizzy, with thousands of instagrammers taking to Twitter to voice their outrage.
Apparently, Instagram was listening:
Faced with a loud and angry backlash from some of its most active users, photo-sharing app Instagram backtracked Tuesday on new language that appeared to give the company ownership of their images.
“The language we proposed … raised question about whether your photos can be part of an advertisement,” Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom wrote in a blog post. “We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we’re going to remove the language that raised the question.”
The Twitter-Facebook-Instagram increasingly hostile love triangle continues to intrigue social media junkies and light up the digital switchboards with reactions ranging from the reasonable and measured, to unhinged and absurd.
Real quickly as background, Facebook bought Instagram in September for a cool billion. Recently Instagram turned off support for Twitter, causing photos shared from the photo app to disappear from Twitter feeds, or more accurately from Twitter’s new “card” feature.
Yesterday we learned that Twitter had offered to buy Instagram for $500 million in March, 3 months before Mark Zuckerberg pulled the trigger after a healthy bowl of Cheerios (seriously). Then earlier today Instagram released their new privacy policy, insinuating that users profiles, pictures and data could all be used in advertisements without their knowledge or consent, which touched off the fierce reaction on Twitter. Then finally, a few hours ago, Instagram backed off that policy with the statement above.
Your move Google.
We do have one question though, not entirely divorced from this issue; do you anticipate a new social media bubble burst, in light of the endless infighting amongst social media’s biggest players, or is this a good thing for the future profitability of their businesses?
