Instagram Reverts To Original Ad Terms After Outcry, Says It Needs To Figure Out Ad Program First

Following the controversy over recently-unveiled changes to its terms of service, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom just announced via blog post that the advertising-related section of the TOS has reverted to “the original version that has been in effect since we launched the service in October 2010.”

The Facebook-owned photo service had already hinted that this was coming, with Systrom saying that the team was listening to user concerns and that there would be changes to the TOS to make it clear that “it is not our intention to sell your photos.”

That doesn’t mean Instagram won’t ever make ever make advertising-related changes to its TOS. Instead, Systrom says that the company needs to figure out the details of its advertising program first:

Going forward, rather than obtain permission from you to introduce possible advertising products we have not yet developed, we are going to take the time to complete our plans, and then come back to our users and explain how we would like for our advertising business to work.

Systrom also apologizes outright, though to he attributes the outcry to bad communication on the company’s part, rather than any real malicious intent. (In fact, TechCrunch’s Drew Olanoff and Josh Constine discussed the communication issue yesterday.) Here’s the apology:

In the days since [the updated terms unveiled], it became clear that we failed to fulfill what I consider one of our most important responsibilities – to communicate our intentions clearly. I am sorry for that, and I am focused on making it right.

The concerns we heard about from you the most focused on advertising, and what our changes might mean for you and your photos. There was confusion and real concern about what our possible advertising products could look like and how they would work.

You can check out the updated terms of service here.

For more on this issue, read Josh’s piece on the lessons learned from Instagram’s ad policy fiasco.

Instagram is a free photo sharing application that allows users to take photos, apply a filter, and share it on the service or a variety of other social networking services, including Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, Flickr, and Posterous. The application is compatible with any iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch running iOS 3.1.2 or above or any Android device running Android 2.2 or above. In an homage to both the Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid cameras, Instagram confines photos into a square...

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A Hackathon Ushers In A Holiday Version Of Changemakrs, The Platform For Inspirational Quotes

Changemakrs, a platform for sharing inspiration built by an ex-Facebooker, is tapping into the Christmas spirit with a version of the site that lets anyone share holiday quotes.

If you sign into the site, Changemakrs will automatically add holiday quotes to the homepage, using some natural-language processing algorithms that categorize the quotes. They also do quality filtering through internal user rankings. This holiday version of the site was hacked together in a few hours. The site has picked up holiday quotes from Bon Jovi, the movies “Miracle on 34th Street,” and “Elf,” and Charles Dickens.

Changemakrs is a platform where anyone can post and share inspirational quotes. It was born out of some experimentation by a former Facebook business development manager Sacha Tueni and his co-founder Mathias Wagner. After working on a Twitter client (yes, a Twitter client) for a couple of months, they built a tribute site to Steve Jobs that overlaid his best advice on top of stark, black-and-white photos of him.

The barebones site quickly went viral, accumulating 3 million pageviews in about 48 hours. They then repeated that approach with many other famous figures like Albert Einstein and Lady Gaga, with similar results.

They then turned it into an open site where anyone could share or accumulate bits and pieces of aspirational wisdom. The site came out of beta earlier this month. Yes, it is a bit of a brain-dead, simple concept, and strangely, web-focused in a mobile-first world. But the team says that while there are plenty of quote sites across the web, these competitors are outdated with Craigslist-era design. Plus, they’re not designed to be particularly social or viral.

Tueni, who used to work at Facebook, has been involved in social change-oriented projects before. Before he joined Facebook, he built a mobile service that let Lebanese voters report election irregularities with their feature phones. Changemakrs is currently bootstrapped for now.

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Lessons Learned From Instagram’s Ad Policy Fiasco

Instagram’s back-and-forth on its advertising policy is a case study in tech PR blundering. It demonstrates the need for clear explanations of terms of services changes. It also raises the question of whether apps should update their terms to cover future monetization strategies as early as they know what these money-makers look like, or if they should notify users right before the ads go live.

When Instagram changed its ad terms this week, co-founder Kevin Systrom admitted its mistake was that it confused everyone. And as I’ve written, you always fear what you don’t understand.

Two years in, it was time for Instagram to step up plans for monetization. But it used vague and omnious legalese to update its terms and say it could be paid to use people’s likeness, photos, and actions for promotions. Users jumped to the the worst possible interpretation, panicked, and forced the company to apologize and revert the advertising terms to the old version.

That was a massive exercise in burning Instagram’s social capital. It had had a pretty good run without security or privacy problems. Even through the Facebook acquisition, people remained hopeful the company would keep its hands clean. In just a few days, millions of people lost trust in Instagram. Some completely, exporting their photos and deleting their accounts, most just stopped seeing it as different than the stereotypical money-hungry corporation.

Needless to say, Instagram could have handled this whole situation better, and others startups would do well to avoid this mess. If there’s one big takeaway from the who debacle, it’s that web services have to make sure not to confuse their users with terms of service updates, or people will assume the worst. But a smooth terms of service change takes careful timing too.

Maybe the answer is right from the beginning. Startups, just like Instagram, often launch with terms that say users may see ads. Nowadays they should probably include that users may be ads. But if done too vaguely, this could deter growth, or cause PR problems too early when a service doesn’t have users locked in yet.

You could say that was the case here. Instagram has great market and mindshare right now, but it’s also just been joined in the photo sharing space by several competitors. Twitter now has filters, Flickr launched its own app, and now Google has Snapseed. Plus people were already a little riled up about Facebook integrating data with Instagram and the governance vote being eliminated.

It wasn’t the best time for Instagram to give users a scare.

More importantly, though, it wasn’t ready. Instagram’s vague language was surely in part because it doesn’t exactly know what it wants to do with ads. The more specific the plans, the more clear a company can make its terms, the less users have to misinterpret, and the less outcry there will probably be. Some will say as soon as possible, but if you do it too soon there’s no way you can do so clearly.

But there’s a flip side. A company doesn’t want to wait until just before the ads themselves start showing up, because they don’t want to give users tangible evidence to latch their anger onto. That’s probably what Instagram was shooting for. It hoped to slide these new ad terms in, and later subtly start showing ads without much of a stir.

Now with the old ad terms in place, Instagram is going to go meditate on how its advertising business will work. We’ll see if that eventual TOS change can hit the sweet spot between when people forget about this week’s fiasco, and when we finally see how tomorrow’s camera makes money.

[Image via Getty]

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A Whisper Is A Stronger Social Signal Than A Public Shout

Yesterday was a surprisingly interesting news day, given how close we are to celebrating the holidays. Facebook struck while the iron was hot and released a brand new standalone iOS app called “Poke”, leveraging a feature that has been around since the early days of the product, as well as a shot across the bow of Snapchat, who it reportedly attempted to acquire.

At first glance, it’s a competitive move, and also a whimsical one. The idea of sending someone a message that self-destructs is kind of “cute”, in the way that passing notes in class was when you were younger. But make no mistake about it, Facebook’s Poke is meant as a means to strengthen its social graph, as well as to crib signals from your daily lives and activities to make itself a better company. I’m not saying that anything is wrong with that, but these are the obvious facts.

Let’s discuss the idea of a social signal first, though. When you tweet something, and someone responds, that’s a signal that the person is interested in what you have to say. One could also infer that this person “likes” you, or has an affinity for you or what you just said. This could all be torn down as bullshit though, since we all know that sometimes we respond to people to simply get their attention.

The Facebook Poke is an interesting historical feature, one that hasn’t really been documented. It was Mark Zuckerberg’s baby, as Facebook was and is, but not much is known about it, only assumed. During yesterday’s ferver about this new Poke app, a phrase was repeated by outlets over and over again, here’s one from CNN:

The poke, which is still around but rarely used, is a minimalistic form of communication — the digital equivalent of a head nod or wink.

I take issue with the notion that it’s “rarely used”, because we simply do not have data to back that statement or sentiment up, Facebook has never made it public. I would challenge that it’s not public data because it’s quite important. Whispering to someone is way more interesting than speaking to ten people in a crowd.

When you’re at a bar and you look around at the people there, are you interested in what a group of fifteen people are talking about, or what the two folks in the corner are speaking about directly? You could infer that they’re having an intimate conversation, perhaps a closely connected moment. If it’s a guy and a girl, you might wonder if they’re dating, married or are about to “hook up”. The group of fifteen, however, are simply blowing off steam and having a good time. But for a company like Facebook, the connection in the corner is more valuable to them as a company, and you as a user.

Facebook has attempted to help you connect to the people who matter most by automatically and algorithmically creating a “Closest Friends” group on the service. This is probably based on a number of factors, although none of us who aren’t working at Facebook are sure. It’s probably a mix of how often you message them directly, how often you comment or like their status updates, how often you message them directly or even how often you visit their profile. All of the actions are “data points” and “social signals” to Facebook. All of this data then gets analyzed by people and algorithms to try and display the best experience possible for you on Facebook.

When I say that Facebook is trying to make it a better experience for you, I mean that it wants you to stay there and never leave. That should be the goal for every company with a social product. When you see content on your News Feed that is interesting, and you feel the need and want to engage, that’s a huge score for Facebook and eventually it’s advertisers.

Spending more time on Facebook, be it on the desktop or on mobile, is always the goal. You don’t go to a restaurant that you hate and spend a lot of money there, do you? Of course not. Great restaurants figure out a way to make you feel at home, more comfortable, call you by your first name all in the hopes that you’ll return and tell your friends to come too. It’s just good business.

Facebook is a business, don’t forget that. As is Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Snapchat, Instagram, Yahoo! and every other company that you use products from, for free.

People get up in arms when business and social interconnect. Why? Well, showing us ads on Facebook is like being a part of that fifteen person conversation in a bar, and then a Coca-Cola rep jumping in the middle and saying “Hey! Becky loves Coke, you should too! BYE!” Sounds obnoxious, doesn’t it? But that’s business, it happens every single day. There are Bud-Light signs in bars to attract you to the product, it’s just how it works.

What Facebook is doing with Poke is trying to figure out who you interact with privately the most. If they know that, then they know what ads will work better on you. If I Poke Josh Constine a lot, then they know that an ad with his face or content on it might just work on me. That’s pretty smart. It also creeps some people out. Get used to it, though, it’s the present and the future.

Your whispers, while they aren’t technically being “read, watched or listened to” are being tracked as serious social signals. That’s why the app exists, it’s not because Zuckerberg was bored and wanted to code, don’t think that for a second.

Google doesn’t “read” your email, just like Facebook won’t “look at” your Pokes. They don’t have time for that, they don’t care, and well, it’s illegal. But what these companies are doing is watching how you use their services so that they can tune them better to fit yours, and everyone else’s, needs.

This is how Facebook is going to attract the rest of the world’s population that aren’t using Facebook. It needs your data to survive. If you’re not OK with that, you have a choice to not use it. You can leave the Internet entirely. But what you can’t do is complain about it over and over. It’s life, it’s business and you are the product. Period.

While Facebook does feel like it has, and will continue to, change the world, it is a company with business models and now shareholders. The same goes for Google. Don’t be a cynic and think that Facebook or Google is evil. They’re not, they’re people just like you. But do go in with your eyes wide open.

Your whisper is more valuable than a public shout, say a comment on someone’s public status update about how cute their dog or child is. You could be commenting on the update to remind them that you’re there, or to show off in front of others. Facebook can’t know that. Nobody can.

But know this, Facebook is interested in your conversation, winks, hugs and kisses with that guy or girl in the bar, way back in the corner by the jukebox. Especially if you’re in a demographic that it doesn’t have a hold on. Like, younger crowds that Snapchat has the attention of.

*Poke*

[Photo credit: Flickr and Flickr]

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 1 billion monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...

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Facebook Makes Big Last-Minute Holiday Drive To Sell Gifts With Banners Atop The Web And Mobile Feeds

Touting its ability to notify someone immediately that you bought them a present, Facebook is showing large banners atop the web and mobile news feed telling people to buy Gifts. Facebook hopes tardy shoppers will purchase through its e-commerce arm because presents bought elsewhere wouldn’t arrive before Christmas. Facebook’s won’t either but at least friends would know they have a gift on the way.

Facebook debuted Gifts in September to give people an easy way to buy a wide variety of presents for friends on special occasions like their birthdays, engagements, or graduations. It’s since rolled out Gifts to all U.S. users who have been starting to see these banners over the weekend.

Gifts uses data on who you’re closest to and what a recipient likes to make intelligent suggestions for who you should give to and what you give them. Gifts range from physical goods like flowers, chocolate, and stuffed animals to digital gifts like Starbucks, iTunes, and Uber credits. Digital Gifts are delivered immediately, which makes them great last-minute presents.

Until now, the Gift buying flow usually started with you choosing a specific person and clicking through the Gift icon on an alert about their birthday on the Facebook.com homepage or at the top of the mobile news feed.

This holiday push is different. It first tries to get you to decide to buy Gifts at all. If you click the “Get Started” button on the “Send A Last-Minute Gift” banners appearing at the top of the small and big screen news feeds, you’re shown a smart list of your closest friends. These are the people you talk with and are tagged with most and therefore are most likely to want to buy gifts for.

From there you can choose a Gift, write a personal message, pay (or pay later), and have your Gift sent. That means your friend sees a “wrapped” version of it on their wall instantly. It works well for last-minute holiday shoppers because there’s evidence that you bought someone a Gift right away, even if physical gifts take a few days to come via snail mail and don’t arrive until after Christmas. Facebook warns you Gifts will be delivered after December 25th, so you don’t think it will overnight your presents.

By using its unique data set to match you with people to give to and what to give them, Facebook has a chance to usurp ecommerce sites like Amazon. A lot of people are happy to spend money on Gifts, but its the shopping process that deters them. Facebook’s suggestions take the decision-making out of Gift giving, so it feels like a quick and casual transaction rather than something you labor over. The holidays are stressful enough after all.

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 1 billion monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...

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Facebook Poke Vs. Snapchat: What’s The Difference?

Today, Facebook launched a new mobile app called Poke. It’s strikingly similar to a new photo-sharing app that’s taken the blogosphere by storm, called Snapchat.

Both Snapchat and Poke let you send pictures or videos which are then destroyed within a matter of seconds.

But the social network has officially launched its competitor, and the differences are few but important.

The biggest difference between Snapchat and Poke may come down to Terms Of Service, which is fitting with the Instagram conversation still burning.

It’s unclear whether or not Poke keeps the images on Facebook’s servers or not. We’ve reached out to Facebook and are waiting to see what Facebook puts on the now-empty Poke support page.

If it’s in keeping with the Facebook Terms Of Service, Facebook likely gets to hold on to that content for a period of time before it’s deleted. This is what Facebook’s TOS says about your content when it’s destroyed:

When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).

The social network may have to develop some new language for this app, as opposed to having all of Facebook’s products fall under the same terms of service. In fact, Josh Constine has learned that Facebook may actually be completely deleting photos from its servers or is at least making them completely inaccessible to users and employees. We’ll wait for confirmation on that.

Update: Facebook has clarified it’s terms of service for Poke:

All Poke messages are stored in encrypted form and retained for two days after the last recipient views the poke — a process that helps facilitate abuse reporting. After that period, a Poke’s encryption key is deleted. However, it may still be possible to recover that key from logs or backups. After a fixed time period, this key becomes inaccessible, rendering the content completely unreadable (unless it was copied for abuse reporting.) Today, that fixed period can be up to 90 days, but we are working to significantly reduce that period over the next several weeks as we verify the stability of the Poke deletion system.

Snapchat’s method is to delete the image from its servers as soon as the recipient has seen it.

A second, and important, difference is the way Snapchat and Poke connect you to friends.

Snapchat uses Facebook to find friends, and obviously Poke does the same, so Poke has a leg up in terms of auto-integration. Still, Snapchat may help you actually find more friends with the app, as you can search by phone number or user name to add friends.

It’s also worth considering Snapchat’s username customization. The app has a loyal base of users with chosen screen names. That could be one of the bigger differences between Snapchat and Facebook Poke.

When you download Poke on a mobile device, you instantly log in with your Facebook Profile, relegating you to the name you use on Facebook and the friends you have there.

Though I don’t believe in the slightest that Snapchat is used primarily for sexting, I do think that there may be some users who enjoy snapping with randos (as evidenced by Twitter) that would like to keep their anonymous user name.

Poke also has two extra forms of interaction: text-only messages and “pokes.”

Both let you overlay text onto photos, and both let you draw over photos in a selection of colors (if we’re getting picky, Snapchat has more color options for drawing).

After you’ve taken your picture (or video) and added your text and artwork, both apps let you set a limit on how long the content will be viewable to the recipient. On Poke, the second limit is a choice between 1, 3, 5 or 10 seconds, whereas Snapchat lets you choose anywhere between 1 and 10 seconds.

The actual feature differences are slight, but it’ll be interesting to watch this space take off now that Facebook has thrown its hat in the ring.

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 1 billion monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...

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Snapchat is the fastest way to share a moment with friends. You control how long your friends can view your message – simply set the timer up to ten seconds and send. They’ll have that long to view your message and then it disappears forever. We’ll let you know if they take a screenshot! Build relationships, collect points, and view your best friends. Snapchat is instantly fun and insanely playful. Show your friends how clever you can be and enjoy the lightness of...

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Instagram Courts Future Advertisers By Letting Facebook Brand Page Owners Share Straight To Fans

Instagram pushed some app updates for iOS and Android yesterday, but it delayed a blog post about them until this morning to give the company’s apology for terms of service shenanigans more time at the top of the site. A post describing the updates came this morning, and it highlights that its Android app now lets Facebook Page admins connect their accounts and share Instagrams directly to fans.

Most of what else was added in the updates to Instagram for iOS and Android was hashed over yesterday, including support for 25 additional languages, a new Mayfair filter, uploads from non-camera roll albums, and fixes to a bug with its privacy policy toggle.

The ability to share to a Facebook Page is fascinating, though, as it will encourage brands to create accounts on Instagram. That could lay the groundwork for turning these brands into advertisers once Instagram figures out how it wants its ad business to look.

If it wasn’t obvious enough, brands should probably start looking to hire top Instagram-takers to prep for the next age of social advertising that focuses on photos. Subtly turning product photos into marketing content without being overbearing is no easy feat. A brand’s best bet might be recruiting people who’ve acquired millions of followers by mastering the art and science of what resonates on Instagram.

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