

AppData says that Instagram may have lost 25% of users after TOS change - Irishsteve
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/rage_against_Dh05rPifiXBIJRE1rCOyML
It's a bit far down the page. Not much info but is as follows...<p>Facebook's (FB) Instagram unit may have lost nearly aquarter of its users after a recent flap over its change in terms of service. That's according to the New York Post, quoting figures fromAppData. Instagram had 16.4 million active daily users the week it rolledout its policy change, but that number has now fallen to 12.4 million.
======
neya
Instagram is a perfect example of how arrogance could re-define the 'image' of
a company.

The real problem for Instagram was not about selling its users' photos. The
real problem was being 'sneaky as fuck'. If you intend to sell our photos, we
actually have no problem. You just have to make it clear to us. But what did
Instagram do? Silently update it's terms of service WITHOUT informing its
users. Legally, it's not obliged to do so, but when you have tons of data that
THE USERS have uploaded, it is YOUR duty to tell us, atleast inform us before
trying to sell it. This is what created that public outrage, because Instagram
failed to notify any of its users of this change. You can't just walk in one
fine day saying, "You know what? All the pictures YOU have taken effort
getting it right, will be ours from today, and I guess it's best you don't
know about it."

Well, fuck you Instagram, you deserved this. When I joined Instagram, I knew
someday it would have to make money to sustain and most likely my data would
be compromised (something an average user wouldn't realize and would assume
it's forever free). Fitting ads somewhere inside your app or on your webpage
would have been a much better solution, because it is something the average
user would see (and possibly wouldn't mind either). But your sneaky as fuck
change in TOS was UNETHICAL. You deserve this. I just hope some other open
source app replaces you and your fame fades away. Because you are
u.n.e.t.h.i.c.a.l.

~~~
SolarUpNote
But wasn't this whole thing a big misunderstanding?

They were never going to sell users' photos. The TOS changed to make way for
"promoted" photos (advertising).

[http://blog.instagram.com/post/38252135408/thank-you-and-
wer...](http://blog.instagram.com/post/38252135408/thank-you-and-were-
listening)

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

~~~
alexqgb
Ok. You can start by properly reading the link you posted. Here's the opening
line:

"Yesterday we introduced a new version of our Privacy Policy and Terms of
Service that will take effect in thirty days. These two documents help
communicate as clearly as possible our relationship with the users of
Instagram so you understand how your data will be used..." Key words: "These
two documents help communicate AS CLEARLY AS POSSIBLE."

Scroll down another three inches, and you'll find this gem: "Legal documents
are easy to misinterpret."

Well no shit. Privacy Policies and ToS agreements are notoriously opaque. But
here's what's even harder to understand: a person who (correctly) thinks that
documents like these are "easy to misinterpret" nevertheless asserts that they
"help communicate as clearly as possible", and does so at the top of a blog
post that is supposed to do what? Communicate MORE clearly than possible?

Maybe all this can simply be chalked up to bad communication skills, a general
lack of self-awareness, and a weak grasp of academic basics like logic and
English. But most people don't regard freshly minted billionaires as idiots,
and refuse to give them the benefit of the doubt. That's twice as true when
the billion dollars come from someone who is widely seen as untrustworthy.

~~~
SolarUpNote
This what I was referring to:

"... it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to
others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that
this language is confusing. To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your
photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is
clear."

and this:

"The language we proposed also raised question about whether your photos can
be part of an advertisement. We do not have plans for anything like this and
because of that we’re going to remove the language that raised the question."

So it sounds like they never wanted to sell people's photos, or use them in
advertisements. (which is what the major complaint was, right?)

~~~
alexqgb
Maybe, maybe not. We're simply taking them at their word. For all anyone
outside the company knows, this was a stealth move designed to see how far the
TOS could be pushed before the company decided what, exactly, they were going
to do within whatever parameters they could get away with. After all, the real
issue with becoming part of Facebook for $1 billion is that Instagram is
reasonably assumed to be hard pressed to justify their price in a corporate
structure famous for its own uncertain prospects and notorious lack of
scruples.

The other problem is that even now, they're still bullshitting, and indirectly
blaming users for the fuss. In truth, there was nothing unclear or confusing
about the language they used. To the contrary, it was explicitly clear. And
what it said was awful. Even if the message conveyed wasn't what they
intended, it's dishonest to to characterize the resulting uproar as
"confusion". That wasn't confusion. That was justified fury aimed at a richly
deserving target.

Even now, they're still remain very unclear on the concepts of respect,
integrity, and honesty. What they should have said was not "Thank you" (as if
people's rage is a favor gladly bestowed), and "Hey, we're listening", (as if
there was any doubt when their entire brand was headed for a cliff.) This is
just more patronizing nonsense, which only exacerbates the mushrooming trust
issue they've got on their hands.

Instead, they should have said, in big bold letters at the very top "We're
really Sorry! We just published something truly awful. In no way does it
reflect our intentions, but none of you had any way of knowing that, so if we
were in your position, we'd be just as furious as you are. Again, we screwed
up the ToS - badly. We're scrapping that effort entirely. Please accept our
very humble apologies. "

Continuing, the should have noted "And that's not the only thing we screwed
up. By failing to share our plans for the company with the community we rely
on - in plain English, clearly, and up front - we left you no choice but to
assume the worst when our train-wreck of a ToS update hit the internet.
Furthermore, we've failed to account for the residual trust issues that our
new owners at Facebook developed in their rapid growth phase, and which they
are still dealing with today. We are now aware that we're a part of putting
those concerns to rest, which means being especially careful with things like
Privacy and IP. As noted, we weren't. Please believe us when we say that we've
learned these lessons hard and fast, and that none of these problems will be
problems again."

At that point, they could do what they should have done from the very
beginning, and clearly explain the (hopefully) non-abusive, non-sleazy way
they intended to build a commercial service to the IP holders they rely on.

------
josephlord
Making a judgement on the basis of two datapoints for weekly data where one of
the weeks is a major holiday in the biggest relevant markets strikes me as a
bad idea. Unless you can use previous years seasonality to adjust the data.

It may be that Instagram would normally have an increase rather than a
decrease at Christmas but I wouldn't assume that without data.

------
freehunter
The question Instragram has to answer for themselves is, is losing these users
a bad thing? It's an obvious answer, do you want 16 million users who aren't
making you a dime, or 12 million users who are able to be monetized?

Even if it dropped to one million, one million users making you money is
arguably better than any number of users who aren't making you money if you're
running a business.

~~~
w1ntermute
Yeah, I really got the feeling that SV had finally jumped the shark when
Instagram got sold for $1 billion. How can a service with users, but no clear
revenue stream, be valued so highly? It seems like people have gotten too
caught up in navel (and traffic stats) gazing to see what's really important
when running a business.

~~~
sksksk
It wasn't worth $1bn on the general market, but it was worth 1% of Facebook's
equity (which at the time was worth $100bn)

Photos are Facebook's biggest feature by far, and Instagram is the only
company that has come close to challenging it, when you look at it in those
terms, 1% isn't a lot at all

~~~
w1ntermute
> Photos are Facebook's biggest feature by far

And what kind of revenue does that feature bring in exactly? How exactly does
Facebook profit from providing free photo hosting to a billion people?

~~~
kooshball
> And what kind of revenue does that feature bring in exactly? How exactly
> does Facebook profit from providing free photo hosting to a billion people?

The "goal" of facebook is for you to share and connected with your friends.
Photos are just one of the things everyone wants to share. Without it,
Facebook would have a giant hole for a competitor to attack.

Facebook profits by having the most active and connected users. It's not
necessary to make money from each feature. That's extremely short sighted.

~~~
w1ntermute
> It's not necessary to make money from each feature.

Which is correct. Google provides search functionality, but makes its money
from advertising.

But what feature exactly _is_ Facebook making money off of? They seem to
_still_ be scrambling to find a revenue source. I don't understand how this
situation is _at all_ acceptable from the investors' viewpoint. _That_ is why
I say that SV has jumped the shark.

------
robinwauters
Sorry but it's bullshit. Apologies for self-promoting my The Next Web article
on this, but many popular apps seemingly lost a lot of users according to
AppData's data. It doesn't add up at all.

[http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2012/12/28/no-rage-against-
ru...](http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2012/12/28/no-rage-against-
rules/?fromcat=all)

~~~
idunno246
this. appdata's data fluctuates wildly quite often. given the quality of the
inside network blogs, i'd call any of it into doubt

------
kmfrk
I deleted the one photo in my profile and all my likes - and cleaned up in the
accounts I followed - but I'll still see if I can write a personal client that
fetches the photos of people I am following and stores any "likes" in my own
database.

After that - or before, if Instagram insist on changing their rules - I'll
probably delete it altogether.

------
alxndr
The CNBC page has one paragraph that mentions Instagram, and cites the New
York Post for its info. Here's the NYP article about Instagram:
[http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/rage_against_Dh05rPifi...](http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/rage_against_Dh05rPifiXBIJRE1rCOyML)

------
trustfundbaby
While I want this to be true, the Nextweb rebuttal of this article makes a lot
more sense [http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2012/12/28/no-rage-against-
ru...](http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2012/12/28/no-rage-against-rules/). I'd
wait on some better data.

------
chrisringrose
_It's a hoax._

I'm afraid this is all moot. Instagram _didn't_ lose 25% of it's users.

[http://gizmodo.com/5971784/instagram-says-25-user-exodus-
is-...](http://gizmodo.com/5971784/instagram-says-25-user-exodus-is-bullshit)

------
ja27
I know several friends that deleted their accounts over what they read about
the TOS changes. Not one of them was an actual active user.

~~~
pimeys
I was a quite active user posting about 1-3 pictures per day, liking stuff and
having a bit over hundred followers. I deleted my account after this change.
Good riddance Facebook.

------
hrabago
This goes on to show that people actually do care about these issues. The
problem is that generally people aren't aware of the terms they're agreeing to
unless someone breaks down what the TOC actually means, or what the
consequences could be.

------
islon
The keyword here is "could".

------
jstanley
Not really on topic, but they seem to have missed out an unbelievable number
of spaces between words. I wonder what has happened there.

~~~
dspig
Looks like search-and-replace newline with nothing, but some of the newlines
were acting as spaces. It's a shame even big organizations can't afford basic
proof reading any more :(

------
antidoh
Where on CNBC are these "Primer Posts" linked from? In other words, what CNBC
page would I bookmark to see the latest one?

The best I could come up with is a search, which is silly.

[http://search.cnbc.com/main.do?target=all&categories=exc...](http://search.cnbc.com/main.do?target=all&categories=exclude&keywords=primer)

------
jusben1369
It's too early to tell if this is good data or not. Assuming it is it begs the
question. Why would Instragram's Users (a major % of them) act in a way we've
never seen when other SN's pull similar moves? What's so unique about
Instagram vs FB and is their any broader lesson to be learned from that?

~~~
rayiner
As far as I can tell, it's all about selling peoples' pictures versus using
them to leverage targeted ads. I don't think most Instagram users ever thought
about how the service would be monetized, but I think even the ones that did
assumed it would just be ads like FB, etc. But taking someone's pictures and
selling them is a whole different ball game.

------
guelo
I'm kind of surprised by how small Instagram is. Facebook paid a billion
dollars for those 12 million users.

~~~
diego
That's more than 1% of Facebook's users. At the time, Facebook was worth 100B.

~~~
jpdevereaux
But also consider that many if not most of those users were already on
Facebook.

~~~
speeder
And they had reason to LEAVE facebook (or at least, stop being so active on
it, and concentrate on twitter).

------
mrharrison
No way, thats completely false. The only people that really care about the TOS
or even know whats going on, is us geeks. Normal people on the street don't
care or even realize whats going on.

~~~
jeremyarussell
I'm one nerd, and I know a solid two hundred plus people in real life that
asked me what the Instagram thing was all about because they had heard about
some stuff and needed clarification. I won't run through what I talked to them
about but I can assure you, it is not just nerds and geeks that care about
this stuff. The key difference why I got 200+ people IRL asking me questions
about Instagram? Because I am patient and can explain things in layman's
terms. Non-technical people won't ever ask someone that assumes they don't
want to know these things questions regarding these things.

~~~
mrharrison
Dude you just assumed on me. I just dislike when people post bogus articles
like this on hacker news. Completely unfounded data. You assumed this data was
because of the TOS and so did CNBC to get more page hits. Yes I asked many
people who didn't ask me, and they didn't think much of it.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/bogus-story-about-
instagram-l...](http://www.businessinsider.com/bogus-story-about-instagram-
losing-users-2012-12)

------
jacquesm
Weaselwords like 'may' in the title don't help here. Either they did or they
didn't, if you don't know don't bother writing an article.

------
Atacat
This headline is completely misleading. It was the NY Post's (incorrect) take
on the data that was behind this article, not AppData.

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mtgx
Too bad something like that never happened to Facebook itself whenever they
pushed for their more aggressive default privacy settings. Maybe that would've
forced them to reconsider a little and have more reasonable default privacy
settings.

~~~
jQueryIsAwesome
Facebook is like a basic need now, Instagram is more like a hobby with many
acceptable alternatives.

~~~
propercoil
I think you are getting downvoted because of your username

~~~
jQueryIsAwesome
No.

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frozenport
Also the trend is down. So, they keep loosing.

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tommy_m
Yeah, one out of every four users on FB/Instagram read and understand the TOS,
then care enough to stop using the service. That makes perfect sense...

------
wildranter
The takeaway point here is this: never let accountants nor lawyers run your
business.

------
oscargrouch
The new CEO is just brilliant! well done!

