Instagram: Does It Matter That It Will Make Money on Your Pics?

For many professionals in photo industry, Instagram has been an annoyance from the start. A popular article appearing in the Guardian earlier this year accused the service of debasing photography, suggesting that its bevy of filters are in fact the antithesis of creativity, and make all pictures look more or less the same. Personally, I thought this criticism was a bit unfair and smacked of professional snobbery. I wasn't alone. A great article by Chas Edwards that appeared on Ad Age quipped that this predictable rant was what happens when members of a professional community are displeased because amateurs get a chance to compete.

So getting back to Instagram's new terms, what they reveal is that Instagram is developing a revenue model, nothing more. This shouldn't be too shocking to most readers. Let's face it, it was inevitable that Facebook was going to want to monetize on its $1 billion investment at some point. While on one hand, I understand people are annoyed with the abruptness of this change, but on the other I think it's much ado about nothing.

Now I'm sure many users who have been using the service for as long as a couple years probably feel like this is a bait and switch. But, don't forget that they've been using the service for free all this time, while Instagram (and now for Facebook) has plunked down money to pay for developers to write code, servers to host their product, and so on. In order to pay for these costs, the firm needs to develop a revenue model.

So as a business, what is its options? Well, I see three possibilities. The first option is to charge the users for accessing the service. On the face of it, that's a non-starter. Charging for access is the very antithesis of social media, so no way it's going to fly. Could you imagine the ensuing firestorm if Instagram had announced a monthly fee for accessing the service? Not in a million years.