In December 2012, Instagram took steps toward profitability by adding some controversial monetization-related sections to its Terms of Service. The resulting outcry led to key sections being restored to original 2010 versions, but that didn’t stop a certain user named Lucy Funes from launching a class action lawsuit against the photo sharing service.

The latest news in the saga is that Instagram is now asking that the lawsuit be thrown out.
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If you’ve been closely following the story of Instagram and its role in the world of casual photography, you might enjoy this humorous short film by photographer Grant McGuire. It’s titled “Filter My Life.”
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Here’s an interesting project by multi-media journalist Rebecca Davis that captures what you might witness while riding the New York City subway over the course of one year. It’s a ‘flip book’ put together using Instagram photos of everything from the bored commuter to the intimate couple. Read more…

For the first two years of its young life, photo sharing darling Instagram focused primarily on delivering its service to smartphone users. Although demand would have likely been great, the company’s founders decided to hold off on a browser-based component in order to become one of the pioneers of mobile photo sharing.

After the service was acquired by Facebook in 2012, the decision makers apparently decided that their mobile dominance mission had been accomplished. Later that year, in November, Instagram rolled out web profiles. Now, one of the last major walls has come tumbling down: Instagram today announced that photo feeds are now available through the web.
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A 15-year-old boy in Colorado has been arrested for cyber-bulling using Instagram. He is being charged with five counts of third-degree harassment for allegedly downloading photographs of his classmates from Facebook and then uploading them to an anonymous Instagram account with hurtful captions attached.
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We’ve seen Instagram photography on “jewelry” before, but nothing like this. JewelGram is the Kickstarter baby of engineer Gianpiero Riva and jewelry designer Michele Marzotto, and if they get fully funded, we may start seeing high quality Instagram rings and pendents all over the place. Read more…

The tech world has been buzzing over the past couple of days about Vine, Twitter’s new app that lets you share 6-second video loops through an Instagram-style service. If you’ve been out of the loop and need a primer on what the difference between Facebook’s Instagram and Twitter’s Vine is, the above web comic by Willa’s World will bring you up to speed.

Instagram Vs. Vine [Willa's World via Laughing Squid]

P.S. Another big story surrounding Vine today is that the service is dealing with the problem of being flooded with inappropriate content. This comes less than one week after 500px’s mobile app was yanked from the Apple App Store for making nudity available to users.

Over the last few days, many Instagram and Facebook users received a nasty shock when they were unceremoniously locked out of their accounts. The lock-out was accompanied by a message asking for government-issued proof of ID before being let back in.

If these were famous people or celebrities, that would be understandable. But all manner of users have been locked out of their accounts over the last week pending identification; some are even being asked to provide birth certificates if their IDs are deemed unacceptable. Read more…

When you think “Instagram competitor,” the first app that comes to mind is Flickr’s new offering. Having released just in time for Instagram to royally annoy its users with the proposed ToS changes, disgruntled Instagrammers flocked to Flickr in droves.

But there’s a new kid gaining popularity on the lo-fi block that does exactly what Instagram does, only more… German. It’s the EyeEm app, and it’s been climbing the charts so fiercely that it has established itself as a legitimate Instagram competitor in little more than a week. Read more…

A couple of days ago, there were murmurings on the web that Instagram experienced a sharp drop in usage numbers following its ill-handled Terms of Service change. The story was based on findings by analytics firm AppStats, which claimed that Instagram’s Daily Active User count had fallen from over 15 million to around 5 million in the span of about one month.

Now Instagram (and its parent company Facebook) are speaking up and denying that it is seeing a max exodus of disgruntled users. The company has released usage figures for the first time in its young life.
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