Company acquisitions often enable synergies, including changes to the terms of service presented to users of a web-based service. And so, after Facebook started integrating their terms of service in Instagram's, a mess happened.
Now, what puzzled me about that acquisition in the first place is Instagram's near complete lack of a revenue model. What it had that was valuable was a high quality, involved user base, some developer talent, and that's pretty much it.
Contrast this with Flickr, with a well-known business model of selling "pro" subscriptions to photographers. Now, due to the complete lack of vision and mismanagement at Yahoo over the years, its presence was sorely lacking of mobile phones, but that changed recently for the better. And now, the proposition can make sense to end users: Choose between a service where you can buy a product (Flickr), or use another where your personal information is the product (Facebook + Instagram). Hipsters may continue to remain on Instagram for the community, but informed users may soon start to value ownership of what they publish online, even if that means the services are not completely free.
Published on December 18, 2012 at 21:25 EST
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