Instagram Terms of Service Reminder
By Paul Thomson :: 5:53 PM
Instagram recently sent a reminder e-mail to users, about the changes to its terms of service that will take effect on January 19.
You may recall the social media outcry that occurred in December when the social photo sharing service announced changes to its terms that led many to believe they would lose all rights to their photos to advertisers and others on the platform. After a day or two and updates to the original terms changes by the Instagram team, much of the frenzy died down, and many have forgotten about the impending changes, until now.
Instagram’s e-mail reads as follows:
Our community has grown by many millions of people since we wrote our original Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. As we announced in December, we have updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. These policies also now take into account the feedback we received from the Instagram Community. We’re emailing you to remind you that, as we announced last month, these updated policies will be in effect as of January 19th, 2013.
You can read our blog post that highlights some of the key updates. And remember, these updates don’t change the fact that you own your photos that you post on Instagram, and our privacy controls work just as they did before.
Although Instagram worked quickly to address user concerns, the damage may have already been done. Reports came out earlier this month stating that Instagram’s daily active user base fell from about 40 million users to 17 million users. They do appear to have seen a recent uptick, but nothing that can correct the steady overall decline in user base since after the holidays. See chart below.
Some details of the terms of service and user agreements that take place on the 19th will allow Instagram to more easily share data with its parent company, Facebook, by porting all of Instagram’s data to Facebook servers. Unfortunately for Instagram, Facebook doesn’t have a stellar track record when it comes to user privacy and trust.
Instagram Daily Active User Drop:
