Instrgarm Raise the Digital Finger to Their Users

The service that shoot to fame and fortune by enabling users to share photos with friends has now taken the word 'share' and rewritten its meaning.

Take a photo load it on Instagram, share it with friends and now give it to Facebook to exploit and make money on and worst of all you can sit back and get nothing!

It doesn't sound right but Facebook's photo-sharing site Instagram has just updated its privacy policy, effectively allowing it to grab the right to sell its users' photos to advertisers without notification, or money. They have even condescended to giving all Instagram account folders a deadline date of 16 January, but also denied them the opportunity to opt out.

The changes also mean Instagram will share user information with its parent Facebook which bought it earlier this year for $1bn. The sharing of information also now extends to other affiliates and advertisers. In other words whoever they wish to share it with.

Earlier this month, Facebook's vice-president of global marketing solutions, Carolyn Everson said: "Eventually we'll figure out a way to monetise Instagram." Well, it appears it didn’t take them long to sort that problem out and now they have literally grabbed their user’s images and information to exploit as their own and for free!

International technology giants appear to be currently rewriting the rules at their whim and fancy, avoiding tax with not a blink of and eye, taking personal pictures to sell them as their own, sharing information with who they wish and generally behaving very questionably. We have seen policies such as this be reverted before, but it’s now very much a case of ‘Catch us if you can.’

See update on their policy from Instagram in comments

Facebook Buys Instrgram For $1 Billion

One of the most popular apps Instagram has been bought by Facebook for a cool £1billion.

We have all become happy to share our thoughts via blogs, twitter and Facebook, our business contacts via LinkedIn, our social circles via Facebook, our videos via YouTube and our photos via Facebook and Instagram. Instagram has been downloaded and used by a staggering 27 million people, including many celebrities. In fact, the app has only just been released onto the Andriod platform and we only downloaded ourselves this weekend. So in theory the app has the potential to double its audience!

The app is like Adobe Photoshop plus much more and allows users to alter and post images on their smartphones and tablets. It offers stylistic filters, frames, and special effects to photos. Options can transform a straightforward snapshot into something very special.

Kevin Systrom, the the 26 year old CEO, who turned down an offer to join Facebook in 2004, founded Instagram only 15 months ago. With only 13 employees, Systrom now has hit the $1 billion jackpot. Systrom also retains 40% of the company and lands £400million from the deal, which values the business more than the likes of the New York Times!

Although Facebook has a reputation for buying up start-ups and then integrate the technology Systrom has reassured users that Instragram will continue to exist independently of Facebook and will continue to add new features to the product. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg commented , ‘This is an important milestone for Facebook because it's the first time we've ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don't plan on doing many more of these, if any at all.’

As we develop our social skills it is going to be very interesting to see how ownership and privacy evolves. What is clear is that a handful of services will know a significant amount about us which can be used both positively and negatively and how much control the individual ultimately has will be very interesting to watch.