Going from just being an iOS exclusive app and having 27 million users, to now having 150 million after being acquired by Facebook. The photo sharing app is getting only popular as the days go by, now being available on both Android and Instagram, and soon coming to Windows Phone.
The acquisition by Facebook was initially thought to bring doom to Instagram, but things have not changed a whole lot, yet. According to a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, things over at Instagram may soon change. Making money is the first point of any business. The $1 billion that Facebook spent on acquiring Instagram was a pretty heavy investment, and it looks like Facebook now was the start making money out of Instagram.
According to the report, 35 year old Facebook employee Emily White headed over to Instagram to help monetize the photo sharing app. The last time Instagram tried to monetize the site, things greatly backfired. Who remembers the Terms Of Service changes a while ago that saw a large uproar from its users? People started to close their accounts, and leaving the app because users were worried that their pictures would be sold to companies. Instagram was forced to backtrack the Terms Of Service and leave it at that. Since then, Instagram hasn’t tried to monetize the site, until now.
Emily White of Facebook states:
“We want to make money in the long term, but we don’t have any short-term pressure,” she said.
Don’t think that ads aren’t coming to Instagram, they are for sure coming. But it is White’s job to monetize the site without interfering with how the site operates. She has been meeting with the likes of other large corporations such as Coca Cola and Ford Motor Company to discuss business.
Here is what Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research Group says about Instagram:
“Theoretically, [Instagram] could be making hundreds of millions of dollars today, but they would need a big sales force and they would risk polluting the environment.”
White’s biggest challenge is how to put advertisements and make money off of Instagram without hurting its reputation and cluttering the apps. There are several ways to go about this, such as displaying advertisements on top of certain sections in the app (ex. Popular pictures). But we’ll leave it up to Emily White as to what she wants to do. She’s in-charge of the operation and getting things going at Instagram as far as monetizing goes.
Will she succeed? Thoughts?
