What Kim Kardashian Taught Us About Instagram & Social Media

Published on Wednesday, 02 January 2013 18:55

Matt Holandez

Earlier in the week, the ever popular photo app, Instagram updated its privacy policy, not once, but twice. Instagram is a fun and fast way to share your photos with family and friends. This app has become so popular that social media giant Facebook, purchased the company for $715 million dollars in the same year that it became a public listed company itself. Instagram’s purpose of changing its policy was to allow sharing information between themselves and Facebook. At first the updates would have allowed the sharing of information such as location, type of devices being used, and even more with companies owned by Facebook.

Do You Read the Service Agreement Before Accepting?

How many of us really know the terms of the user agreement in different social media networks? Most people who use Instagram and other apps for social media platforms don’t bother to read the updates or revisions and just accept them. Some of us even allow automatic updates and miss out on some of the big changes. Luckily Instagram’s most popular user, Kim Kardashian, read over these terms and threatened to leave for a rival app and take nearly 6 million followers along with her. Instagram’s new update sounded like the company would be able to take users’ pictures and use them in ads without permission from the member and without having to pay any money to the user. Can you imagine your glamorous photos being used without your permission?

Kim is not the only Kardashian that is active on Instagram. She has two other sisters that each post pictures of their family regularly. Khloe Kardashian Odom posted on her Twitter account:  ”Wow…I just read over Instagram’s new policy…so sad, looks like I might be deleting my instagram after Jan 16. I hope something changes.” Of course, after the Kardashian’s threats became public, via Twitter, Instagram made a revised version of the terms. As of January 19, 2013, these new changes will take place.

Lesson Learned

For those of us who are marketers, we know how important social media is to our purpose. We also know how useful apps have become to us. Marketers might have also noticed that when one social media platform makes changes, there is surely another that will follow suit. So whether we use these social media apps for marketing our brands and companies, or simply for fun personal use, be on the lookout for changes and remember it can really be to our benefit to read the changes in updates and terms of service.

Matt Holandez

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