Instagram Fans Dislike Facebook’s Acquisition

Facebook’s $1 billion gobbling up of Instagram has sent disgruntled fans of the quirky photo-sharing app to the delete button.

Twitter and other online platforms buzzed Wednesday with depictions of Facebook as a corporate monster trampling over a defenseless community of creative, free-spirited types.

According to analysts at Crimson Hexagon, which studies social media content, just 12 per cent of 201,000 relevant Twitter mentions of the takeover were positive. Ten per cent registered “disgust” with Facebook and another 10 per cent promised to quit Instagram.

Facebook is wildly popular and has the same basic mission as Instagram – encouraging people to build virtual networks on which to share their lives.

But for Instagram’s 30 million users, the cult-status app has a very different identity to the mass market Facebook.

Unlike Facebook, there is no advertising, and certainly no selling of users’ personal details to advertisers. It’s single-minded, pure.

Sure, the main point is to share snaps, which can be made to look cool with filters, but Instagram’s mobile-to-mobile traffic is seen as safe from the privacy problems said to plague Facebook’s advertiser-friendly pages, as AFP stated.

“Its ability to let its users delicately toe the line between public and private gave us a little breathing room from the all-pervasiveness of Facebook, and to see it whisked away feels like a tangible loss,” wrote Jenna Wortham on The New York Times tech blog.

“The sale of Instagram brings a harsh reality into focus, the realization that the secret rooms or private spaces online where we can share, chit-chat and hang out with our friends are fading. The few safe havens that do exist are quickly being encroached upon or are next on the shopping list for a company like Google, Apple or Facebook.”

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg went out of his way to reassure Instagram purists that they needn’t get their hands dirty.

On his own Facebook page, Zuckerberg noted that users can maintain their Instagram photos off Facebook and also keep their Instagram followers separate.
“We need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook,” Zuckerberg said.