Less than 24 hours after announcing a controversial policy change, Instagram has now withdrawn the policy change. Which is to say, they will not put users' photos in ads. Instagram hastily released the following announcement on Tuesday afternoon. In part, it says:
Advertising on Instagram From the start, Instagram was created to become a business. Advertising is one of many ways that Instagram can become a self-sustaining business, but not the only one. Our intention in updating the terms was to communicate that we’d like to experiment with innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram. Instead 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.
Well, that was fast, wasn't it? All day on the popular photo sharing site, users angrily (and somewhat misguidedly) voiced their opinion via protest and promises to delete their account before January 16, 2013 when the changes were supposed to have gone into effect.
Read the entire mea culpa on Instagram's blog. (Pst, we still say Flickr is just as effective and neat-o as its aforementioned competitor.)