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Instagram and The Blogosphere

Yesterday was an interesting day for Instagram. The morning was full of backlash and outcries over their new Terms of Service. Then, after an official statement from Instagram, there was even more comotion. Now that the dust has settled a bit, I decided to take a look back.

Start by reading MG Seigler’s article on Tech Crunch

Some highlights:

Some days I feel like the blogosphere is full of paranoid attention whores. Other days, I’m sure of it. Today is one of those days.

Have to agree with this as I really don’t think the story warrented such a reaction.

Well, now we have Instagram’s actual statement on the matter, and it’s pretty straightforward: “To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos,” wrote co-founder Kevin Systrom. He goes on to note that: “The language we proposed also raised question about whether your photos can be part of an advertisement. We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we’re going to remove the language that raised the question.” Not quite as straightforward — and I’m sure we’ll have 15 more blog posts on the matter — but clearly well-intentioned.

Well-intentioned or not, its quite the opposite of straightforward. It’s not their intention to sell everyones photos, but that doesn’t answer the question whether they will or not.

Fortunately, I am not the only one who drew this conclusion.

Note how ‘it is not our intention to sell your photos’ isn’t the same as saying ‘we won’t sell your photos’. Despite the forthrightness of the tone, the message is still unclear – will you or won’t you?

Update: Instagram has reverted back to the original Terms of Service

Posted on December 19th, 2012