Instagram is making its Gifts feature available to more creators in the United States. Gifts are described as a way to more easily earn money from an audience -- easy in theory, but it muddies an already confusing monetization web with Meta-owned properties.
Shooting timelapse is certainly a lot of fun, but trying to sell them and make money is an entirely separate story. So that leads to the question: how can you monetize the planning, time spent shooting, and the effort of editing hundreds or thousands of pictures into extra income or maybe a new career?
The selfie. Generally maligned by anyone older than 30 as a narcissistic (and sometimes dangerous) pursuit, the selfie has become enmeshed with all forms of Millenial self-expression. The younger generation isn’t content to just photograph their surroundings, they need to be present in the image or video to enhance the authenticity.
Advertisements on Instagram aren’t a new concept, but the folks at Facebook are working to open their image sharing platform to even more businesses around the globe. Beginning on September 30th, small businesses will be able to run advertisement campaigns on the network in more than 30 countries around the world.
Freshly launched over at SXSW 2013 in Austin, Texas, Imgembed is a new startup company that aims to promote the legitimate use of photos online. Well, it's actually the latest in a string of companies to tackle the embeddable photo concept. For photo purchasers, it's an easy way to find, pay for, and use images. For photographers, its an easy way to make your images available for purchase.
Instagram has had its share of ups and downs during its 2 short years of life, but we think we can safely say that this past week has been the lowest of lows for the popular-but-beleaguered photo sharing service. After hastily pushing out major edits to its terms of service in preparation for money-making plans, users complained, the media pounced, and Instagram backtracked, saying it would revise the terms to appease its users.
Those revisions happened today. Instagram founder Kevin Systrom has announced that key sections of the service's terms have been rolled back to its original 2010 condition.
Earlier this month, Facebook stated that it's working on strategies for monetizing Instagram. Now we're starting to see the gears in the money-making machine warming up.
Instagram announced an update to its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy documents today, with changes that will take effect on January 16, 2013. While it's understandable that any service's terms must change if rolls out a new business model, many users aren't pleased with what some of the updated sections say.
Ever since Facebook acquired Instagram for a ridiculous sum of money earlier this year, people have been expecting the social media goliath to ruin it in one way or another. That's because while the small team behind Instagram may have been happy with just the fame part of fame and fortune, a company like Facebook is used to getting both.
Admittedly, so far the downsides of the acquisition have been few and far between. Instagram is growing like gangbusters and it seems Facebook is trying to stay hands off when it comes to its handling of the service. Really the only downside has been the removal of Twitter integration. But, of course, the meddling has to start sometime, and according to Business Insider that moment isn't far off.