Tag Archives: Acquisitions

Updated Instagram Terms Of Service

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Instagram, purchased by Facebook back in April, have made their first update to their Terms of Service since the acquisition. As expected, these provide Facebook with more access to Instagram’s (and thereby your) data.

For example:

To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata) and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.

This means that basically Facebook can now use your Instagram photos, location tags, username and any other associated data in ad campaigns paid for by Facebook’s advertising partners or other 3rd parties. Your data may now become an ad, and certainly you won’t know about this, be asked permission, or receive any financial compensation.

In addition:

We may share ‘User Content’ and your information (including but not limited to, information from cookies, log files, device identifiers, location data and usage data) with businesses that are legally part of the same group of companies that Instagram is part of…

Similar to the previous clause, this  basically means all your Instagram data is shared with Facebook’s ad partners to allow for increased targeting of ads.

Then my favourite:

You acknowledge that we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content or commercial communications as such

This is all to be expected. Facebook is an advertising company that uses a social network to increase the value of its product (i.e. you and your data). I think it does somewhat remove some of the inherited joy of using Instagram though, knowing that its purpose for being is no longer to provide a great service, but to monetise your activity.

I can’t see myself using the service for much longer, which is easy for me as I wasn’t a particularly frequent user in the first place. Others will likely not know or care about these changes and will no doubt continue to enjoy using it.

There goes another independent service to one of the ‘big four’ (Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon). Up next, Foursquare…

P.S. If you want to delete your Instagram account (I’m seriously considering this), you can do so here. If you’re looking for an alternative, you could do a lot worse than the just-updated Flickr by Yahoo. Still a free service so there’s probably still an advertising undercurrent, but Yahoo are currently in such a state of recovery that they are going to do everything in their power to look after their users – they can’t afford to do anything else.

What on Earth is going on with OnLive?

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Over the last few days OnLive, a service that I have considered as a pioneer of its field (here's my initial review) has gone through some very tumultuous changes. Specific details are few and far between (here's a link to their pathetic statement that's supposed to clear things up), but the 'facts' seem to be:

  • OnLive has sold its assets to a “new investor”

  • All of its 150-200 staff have been fired (or some variation of), but some are to be hired by the new company

  • The service is expected to continue un-interrupted

We don't know anything more. Will the OnLive service really continue to operate or are they just saying that because at the moment they have to? Who is the new owner? Why was OnLive sold in the first place? What is going to happen to the staff? What is going to happen to the customers? What is going to happen to the content? Will I still be able to play my purchased games?

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On ZeeBox’s BSkyB partnership

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This is an old draft I never got around to publishing but here goes…

I spotted Zeebox a couple of weeks ago and having thought about its implications I was surprised that it was the only prominent app on the iOS store doing what it is doing.

I think most people would agree that social TV is the inevitable next step; it just hasn’t been implemented properly yet (e.g. the disastrous performance of Google TV). Zeebox provides real-time twitter and cast/crew etc information about TV shows. You pick the show that you are watching, and it will show you what people are tweeting about it, and will promote tweets from cast and crew.

So, they’ve now sold 10% to BSkyB, announced on both the Sky and Zeebox blogs. This is a pretty big deal as this is a public demonstration of the sort of technology that we will see in Sky’s satellite TV service (they’ve admitted as much in the announcement). You don’t usually get such an advanced preview of a company’s plans.

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What Is Apple Working On Now It Owns Three Mapping Companies?

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I was having a gander through Wikipedia’s list of Apple acquistions, and noticed that they now own not one, not two, but three mapping companies. Each time one of these purchases took place, there was the inevitable speculation about the potential replacement of Google Maps on iOS. This has yet to materialise, but Apple are showing no signs of losing interest in mapping, so what can we conclude? Here’s a quick summary of the mapping acquisitions so far:

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