Instagram is the most common platform photographers, clients and models use to meet and follow each other. Recently though, accounts are getting shut down and mine, with a following of 135,000, was among them.
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.
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.
Are photo-sharing website content policies based on indecency or the mere appearance of indecency? That's what visual web magazine Theories of the deep understanding of things decided to test out yesterday. It uploaded an innocent -- but seemingly risqué -- photo of a woman sitting in a bathtub with her elbow resting on the edge (warning: it looks inappropriate). Lo and behold, the social network quickly took the photo down for violating the service's terms.
John Herrman over at BuzzFeed has written up an interesting piece on how and why "grabby" terms of service have become ubiquitous in the online world of social media:
A little update to the recent brouhaha over Google+’s Terms of Service: …
Last week Scott Bourne published an article on Photofocus titled, "Photos On Twitter – What You Should Know". In it, he claimed that Twitter's terms of service (TOS) forced photographers to give Twitter a license to do whatever they wanted with photos shared through the service. The argument centered around a couple paragraphs found in the document:
By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).
This was used to argue that Twitter owns a license to photos shared through the service.
Kodak made the surprising announcement today that their Chief Marketing Officer Jeffrey Hayzlett is resigning on May 28th to …
Photojournalist Daniel Morel shot an iconic image of a shocked woman looking out from the rubble moments after last …