Three Things We Learned from the Instagram TOS Fiasco

Instagram's abrupt TOS changes may have lasting negative effects.

In December, users of the popular photo sharing site Instagram (now owned by Facebook) were treated to a proverbial piece of coal for the holidays. Based on media reports from Reuters, this is how it played out:

• On December 17^th reportedly, Instagram abruptly changed its Terms of Service (TOS) to note that it could use its members’ photos, likeness and username for advertisements without permission.

• Users of the site didn’t notice at first but, rest assured, some did. News of the changes went viral.
• National Geographic magazine reportedly announced they were leaving the site due to the new terms.
• By New Year’s Eve, according to AppData reports, about 6 million of Instagram’s 16 million users who access it via Facebook left the site as well. (Although,Instagram disputes AppData’s numbers)
• A class action lawsuit was launched in California shortly following the changes.
• December 20^th , according to Reuter’s,Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom apologizes and reinstates the old TOS via a blog, and added the thought that  some users had misinterpreted the intent of the new TOS.
• Instagram users will reportedly be bound by a new TOS as of Jan 19^th.
• As of today, I cannot find out the true impact of the fiasco as ‘Facebook no longer reports new data for this application’ according to a new search I’ve conducted on the AppData site.

We all make mistakes.

Do I blame Instagram for the way it handled the changes? Absolutely; to mask such a large change in the TOS without pointing it out is simply wrong. Whether the intent was to work on ways to monetize Instagram in the future or to take Facebook’s already robust, intuitive advertising platform and put it into place on Instagram, it was wrong. In business, it’s better to be up front with ‘customers.’

Do I blame Instagram for attempting to monetize the business? Absolutely not; although some businesses are founded to serve a greater good, most are in business to make money. If you are signed up for a free service, make no mistake, it is not free. If there is no product being sold, no membership fee, no identifiable means to distinguish how it is making money, chances are, the product is you and your data.

Data is a valuable commodity these days given we are a largely consumer society.

Browsing habits, referring sites, demographic information like family size, your job, what school you graduated from, your birthday; even the titles and subjects of your pictures, can tell marketers something about you. Facebook and the multitude of free apps don’t care about when your birthday or anniversary is but, they do care how old you are and your marital status so they can use your demographic information to sell themselves to potential advertisers.

So what lessons have we learned from Instagram’s PR nightmare?

Buyer beware: Instagram is not the first business in the world to change its TOS (or a contract) to reduce your privacy or to get more data (in this case your pictures) from you. The problem with most TOS statements is that they are written by lawyers, for lawyers. They are also arduous to navigate through, often having 20 or more headings; each with 10-20 subheadings. How many times have you seen the little box on the screen, scrolled quickly to the bottom and clicked I agree? I’ve done it plenty of times.

Small print and multiple pages are not generated by accident. Not only does it reduce the chance that you will read it in full; it almost guarantees it, while indemnifying the company against potential legal action. Read the TOS every time you sign up for a service and when it changes to know what you’re agreeing to.  

Honesty is the best policy: It’s much harder to win a disgruntled customer back  than to be upfront with potentially bad news (anyone remember MCI WorldCom's 'delayed future billing' or Bank of America's debit card fees?). You can rely on the fact that many customers will not care or not take any action whatsoever. However, you lose credibility and relevance, even with the masses, when you anger your top customers. Maybe this was a case of anchoring to make a watered-down monetization scheme seem less ‘bad’ to users but I doubt it; a third of your users (your data) is too high of a price to pay.

Instagram will go away: Call this my first bold prediction of 2013 (although I don’t know how bold it really is). Instagram lost a third of its Facebook users in 10 days. I think the rest will eventually follow. Without a way to monetize its data without severe scrutiny now, it is virtually worthless to Facebook unless there is some proprietary code that is of value to them. Now the only way they’ll be able to realize the app’s full potential is to pawn it off on an unsuspecting suitor. If they can’t sell it, it will go away; sooner than later. Why invest in a product that is losing money that shows little chance that it will make money in the future?

Do you read the TOS statements of your favorite sites? Have you uncovered some shocking revelation when you read them that made you leave? I’d like to hear about it.

Josh Kaplan writes on various subjects including management, information technology breakthroughs, healthcare IT recruitment and innovations, big data, IT staffing and recruitment, and technical news and trends.

    

2012 Year in Review from Talascend IT

Happy New Year!

In this New Year, I wanted to take a moment to thank all of you who read and engaged with Talascend IT and me personally in 2012; be it on the blog, LinkedIn and other social media, via email, and more. I’d also like to thank those of you who have felt compelled to share the stories with others.

The beginning of the year is customarily a time for celebration of what the future holds. It’s also a time for reflection on the past year.  Keeping that in mind, I wanted to share the Top 10 posts of 2012 from Talascend IT (just in case you missed one): 

 

10.   Real relationships, not online connections, build true professional networks

Nov 27, 2012 – LinkedIn is a great networking tool. There is a difference between the number of connections you have and the number real relationships you have online. I explore the idea further in this post, which climbed quickly into the top ten.

9.      Friday Bonus Blog: Forward this blog to 10 of your friends and Microsoft will pay you 1 million dollars (and other respect destroying communications)

May 18, 2012 – Even though spawned out of the spirit of competition between a colleague and myself; the message in this post regarding email ‘dos and don’ts’ was apparently pretty important to our readers.

   

8.      The Myth About Contingent Employee Engagement

Dec 10, 2012 – Contingent workers often get a bad rap. Two conflicting studies on the subject really got me thinking about whether or not there are that many differences between contingent workers and full time employees. Apparently I am not alone, as this story ended up being one of the top posts of 2012 in only three weeks.

7.      Back it up. Back it up. The Cloud isn't as safe as 'they' say it is.

Sep 4, 2012 – I think if I wrote ‘back it up’ one more time in this post, the ‘back it up police’ would have come to arrest me. An interesting look into a subject that affects anyone with anything stored online; from pictures saved to social media to data saved on the cloud.

6.      Words Matter: The importance of semantics in business.

Nov 5, 2012 – Simple phrases can make or break a conversation. They can mean the difference between getting buy in from others and ‘losing them’ in a business setting. This post combines some of the most powerful phrases my peers and I came up with in a recent online discussion.

5.      Some Thoughts Are Better Left Untweeted: Is Social Media Eroding Self-Control?

Mar 12, 2012 – The title says it all. Do you do and say things online you wouldn’t in person? Is the increasingly common ‘take it or leave it’ attitude towards others a result of social media use? The answers to these question and more garnered this post a seat in the Top Five of 2012.

4.      Three ways to get what you really want from an interviewee.

May 14, 2012 – An article from Forbes had a very profound message about how to get the most out of candidates while interviewing. I expanded on the idea more and received a lot of great feedback as a result.  

3.      I'm sorry I missed that: Is technology affecting the way we communicate?

Oct 22, 2012 – A post I saw on LinkedIn regarding etiquette in interpersonal and professional situations really struck a chord with me. This slap on the wrist to myself is an eye-opening look into the dangers of being distracted by instant communication that today’s technology provides us; and what it can ‘say’ to others while you’re talking with them.

2.      Another Dagger in the Heart of Job Boards?: BranchOut announces $25-million in additional backing for combat with LinkedIn

Apr 23, 2012 – The topic surrounding the decline of job boards definitely sparked the most interest and comments from our readers. Some praised the data and relevancy of major job boards. Some feel I am right in my opinion that they will become less relevant and viable as we move into the future. This blog was only a few readers away from being #1 in our countdown.

       

1.      The ’Beginning of The End for Job Boards’ Kicks into High Gear…Monster Announces It’s 'For Sale.'

Mar 26, 2012 – This follow up to an earlier prediction regarding job boards’ relevancy in this day and age of social networking caused a lot of discussion; both online and offline. It was the hottest topic in 2012.

Thank you again for all of your kind words, comments, and interesting points of view regarding the posts in 2012.  Look for more articles, thoughts, and bold predictions in 2013, and all of us at Talascend IT will look forward to hearing from you.

Happy New Year! –

JK

Josh Kaplan writes on various subjects including management, information technology breakthroughs, healthcare IT recruitment and innovations, big data, IT staffing and recruitment, and technical news and trends.

Look what I did! (You should too): A story about social media, peer pressure, and approval.

Are you unconsciously influenced by what
you see on social media?

Recent national events have created a flurry of social media activity. From the election and the associated fervor on both sides to Superstorm Sandy; millions of pictures have been sent, tweets were flying a mile a minute and who was behind them? Survey says: Us.

The need to be first or to fulfill our own need for approval from others is explored a bit further in a recent article from Forbes' Jeff Bercovci. In a witty read, he discusses the various stages of approval seeking and how by the nature of the media itself, it is impossible to have someone notice something you're proud of unless you put it out there. He also discusses the type of peer pressure created by the good deeds of others as well as, pressure created to tell people you did something good.

  

I want to take this idea a step further this week. We've all heard the echoes of our parents voices when we read, 'If your friend jumps off a bridge, should you?' It's a universally used example to deter kids from buckling to peer pressure.

On social media, when you see that your friend likes something, or in Bercovici's example; voted, or has an opinion on a current event, or is ranting about the blown call in the closing moments of the game; does it make you feel like you should do the same?

Does it motivate you to speak out on topics you normally would generally have no business giving your opinion on?

My first instinct is to say, 'No. I don’t.'  But, maybe I do and I just don’t notice?

When I see people post a picture of their kids, do I subconsciously follow?  When someone posts a poignant news story, I re-post it sometimes, and yes, if someone posts that they donated to a charity, or helped someone less fortunate, I have looked into that charity or researched a situation.

Let's take it a step further.  Should companies use social media to promote their own philanthropy or practice philanthropy for the sake of doing good in the community and egging others on to do the same? Is their cyber-bragging wrong because they are a company? Should they wait for someone else to recognize their efforts or, should they tell the world to promote a positive message and goodwill outside their main line of business?

Should we wait for someone else to promote positive messages about us or what we've done, or, should we bask in an introspective satisfaction that we've done something positive in the world?

Social media causes us to seek responses.  By nature we as humans generally want approval, confirmation that we are good people with a purpose, so it seems natural that we would post about positive things we think and do. The confirmation from our friends further fuels the desire for more positive attention. It’s a never-ending cycle, but not necessarily a bad one.

What do you think? (You can let me know here, on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, etc.)

Josh Kaplan writes on various subjects including management, information technology breakthroughs, healthcare IT recruitment and innovations, big data, IT staffing and recruitment, and technical news and trends.

Is LinkedIn Testing Shark Filled Waters with its New Top Influencers Updates?

Is LinkedIn jumping the shark with a new influencers feed?

In what may end up being the jumping of the shark for LinkedIn they, to me at least, have succumbed to social peer pressure.

Up until now the news feed features and highlights that appeal directly to you we're in your feed.  It included only influencers and top discussions from groups you are a member of and news feeds from your network.

I may be ahead of the game and yes, it seems all social networks have a life-cycle. I want to mark today as the day that I said this is the LinkedIn 'jumping the shark moment.' It seems the professional network has buckled to the pressures of other social media and taken steps to remain relevant with users. 

Why do I say this?

LinkedIn, after it dissolved an agreement with Twitter for an instantaneous update feed has now, in what I believe is a struggle to remain relevant, has announced that it has engaged with the professional world's top influencers to post content, whether wanted or not, generated by the business world's top influencers.

According to another blog and as evidenced by this morning's activity, Twitter has engaged the likes of Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Chopra and Robbins to circulate content on its network, and on a regular basis.  

What I don't want in the least is logging into LinkedIn to read Obama or Romney’s political agenda, Deepak Chopra’s peaceful meditation recommendations, or Tony Robbins “inspiration”.

Even though I have a choice whether or not I want to follow this stream of what I consider to be irrelevant fodder on the network, if one of my connections chooses to follow and post updates from these 'influencers' I am faced to deal with countless stories and 'news' feed in which I am not interested.

I purposely choose who Is in my network and from who I want to see updates. Why would you force upon me the people who LinkedIn thinks are important? 

When I log in to Facebook I don’t get political agenda thrown upon me from anyone other than my friends who choose to promote their own beliefs, and If I don’t like them I can argue, or un-friend them. 

Even if they don’t thrust this upon me and make me choose to follow it, it still opens the network up to people who likely aren’t the real people posting information that will be re-tweeted, re-posted on Facebook, and put into news feeds. 

I don’t believe that the likes of Obama and Romney (or Chopra or Robins for that matter) will really sit down and create LinkedIn updates. Sorry, but I’d like to think they have better things to do with their time.  So whatever publicist is posting their messages (that will undoubtedly appear all over the social networks including LinkedIn of which I am a part), I am almost certain I will not be getting information from this “Trusted Elite Influencer.”

LinkedIn...I hate to say it because I do find the professional networking you provide of value not only to my business and colleagues within my business but, I am sorry;  this looks like the beginning of the end to me.

I woke up to the same story re-posted several times on my timeline saying it was a trending story. I may have missed a strategic move by a former colleague or a current colleague as a result. I may use LinkedIn differently than the average user; who is mostly interested in leveraging contacts to gain better employment opportunities; but I feel the new changes have reduced this network to a glorified social medium that is teetering on the edge of becoming just 'another social media outlet.'

Don't get me wrong, LinkedIn has its place. I've said before that I think it will render job aggregation boards obsolete, but I really think LinkedIn could do a lot more to become more than a recruitment platform. Maybe that’s what they are going for with the trusted elite news feeds / following, but I think they missed the target.

They need to engage professionals: the exact people using LinkedIn.   We need to know what professionals are seeing in their industry; not just a single job they need help with. Maybe we as a professional group are transactional and single job focused, but doesn’t the big picture have relevancy?

What do you think? Has LinkedIn devalued itself to pander to the likes of Facebook and Twitter to remain relevant, or do you think the mere nature of the network as a professional network is enough to sustain its relevance, no matter what they do?

Josh Kaplan writes on various subjects including information technology breakthroughs, big data, IT staffing and recruitment, healthcare IT recruitment, and technical industry news and trends.