Now look what you did Instagram – you went and pissed off your most popular user.
That’s right, the eternally-newsworthy Kim Kardashian is reportedly a little skittish following Instagram’s recent policy updates, or Instapocalypse 2012. TMZ reports that the socialite is telling all of her friends that she’s think about quitting the service unless Instagram does something to ease her mind. TMZ says that she’s considering heading to a rival photo sharing service and suggesting that her followers come with her. If you’re unaware, that’s over 5.7 million people.
The only public comment she made about the Instagram situation came on Twitter. It was just before Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom posted a message reassuring users that the company had no intention of “selling their photos.”
I really loved Instagram 🙁 I need to review this new policy. I don’t think its fair.
Of course, Kim K is simply another person who has overreacted surrounding this Instagram mess. In reality, Instagram is not, nor were they ever going to sell your photos. At least not in the manner that spurred that epic freakout. Instagram always said that users retain ownership of their photos. To suggest that Instagram was just going to use your photos to build up a stock photo service in which they could simply license them off to any company for whatever purposes they pleased is misunderstanding the nature of the service.
What was more likely was that Instagram was planning on an in-house advertising product, similar to Facebook’s Sponsored Stories product.
But now, Systrom says that they will remove the language from the revised ToS that allows for users’ likeness and photos to be used in advertising.
In the end, users may follow Kim Kardashian if she decides to jump ship. Instagram did screw up by letting lawyers turn their ToS and privacy policy into a legal-language mess that confused users. Plain language is nice, and it would have probably prevented this giant cluster over a plan that didn’t really ever exist.
[Image Kim Kardashian, Instagram}