Michael R. Beck

Husband, Father, Writer, Entrepreneur

Tag Archives: instagram

Instagram’s New Terms of Service: Profiting From Your Work, Or Simply An Unpaid Modeling Internship Program

Instagram has recently made changes to its terms of service that give them the right to use any content you post to their network for commercial purposes. Mainly, for advertising.

While I don’t begrudge Instagram for finding a way to monetize their free photo sharing service, I can sympathize with those users that fear their likeness will be used without any say on where, when, or how.

I realize that most Instagram members use the service to snap cat pictures and covertly capture shots of disheveled Wal-Mart shoppers. These users probably won’t mind the change to the terms of service, or even be aware of it.

But for many who make their living from the Internet, specifically social media, this is seen as a direct grabbing of their content and an assault on their livelihood.

The Twittersphere is abuzz over this terms of service change.

Reactions ranged from “I’m quitting Instagram”:

To “It’s not really that big of a deal”:

To comical:

As for this Instagram user, I’m taking a “wait and see” approach. I’m already taking pictures using product placement, and Biggby Coffee hasn’t come knocking on my door to hand me a check.

Son at Biggby

Perhaps if this change was taking money out of my hands I suppose I’d be a little more up-in-arms about it. But since I see Instagram as a fun extension of my self-promotional efforts, I don’t foresee me closing my account in protest.

That is, until I see this show up in a Cialis or Viagra ad:

My first picture on Instagram

Then I think I might decide to pull the plug on Instagram.

Update: Instagram posted a response to the feedback on their blog, “The language we proposed also raised question about whether your photos can be part of an advertisement. We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we’re going to remove the language that raised the question.” [Source]

 

April 10, 2012 #HSUchat: Instagram’s Impact on Business

Empire Avenue Puts Stock in Social Media

New York Stock ExchangeEmpire Avenue turns Social Media into a stock market and allows people to buy and sell stock in your personal brand.

It’s part part game, part promotional channel, and part measurement tool.  

The Game

There’s a score involved: your stock price. You want to have the highest stock price possible. The way you do that is to be active and social media and get other people on Empire Avenue to buy your stock using “eaves”. That’s Empire Avenue’s currency.

How do you get people to buy? By being a social media star and telling people to do it. Okay, maybe that’s how social media celebrities pull it off.

I sold the bulk of my stock in the beginning simply by connecting every social network possible. Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Blogs, Instagram… all that’s missing is WordPress.com. (I have self-hosted blogs so I don’t have a WordPress.com account.)

When you connect all of these networks your stock price rises. And when it starts rising from the beginning, everybody wants to jump on that stock. Enjoy it while it lasts, though. Once your “new member smell” wears off, you need to actually do a little work to get additional sales. 

First, you need to make sure your stock’s dividend is good. Eaves are the thing that make this online world go round, and the way to introduce more eaves into the system is by collecting daily dividends off of the stock you buy. The higher the dividend, the more profitable it is to hold on to that stock, and buy more of it. 

How do you get your dividend per share up? By being active in social media. Upload pictures to Instagram. Tweet them. Facebook them. Flickr them. Upload YouTube videos. Rate them. Comment on them. Post on Google+. Check in on Foursquare. Write blog posts.  All of these things feed back into the Empire Avenue monster and makes it grow. The more it grows, the more you earn for other people. The more you earn, the more people will want to buy your stock. Dividend per share is King. 

Just because you have a great dividend per share doesn’t mean people will automatically flock to buy your stock. They have to know you exist. You need to fire a shot across their bow and get their attention. The most effective way to do this is to buy their stock first. 

That’s right, spend a little to get a little. Each time you buy stock, it notifies that person of how many shares you purchased. And when you make a purchase, eaves are added to the account of the person you bought from. That gives them eaves to invest back in your stock.

The more you buy, the more they’ll buy, and the more they buy the more your stock goes up. And the wheel goes ’round.

The Promotional Channel

When people start buying your stock, you’ve simultaneously begun building a new audience. Empire Avenue gives you tools such as “shareholder mail” that you can use to reach your shareholders and tell them more about yourself, and what you do. Empire Avenue also hosts many community groups for you to join and connect with other members who live near you, or have the same interests in you.

Recently Empire Avenue introduced a new feature called missions. With missions you can offer to pay eaves to Empire Avenue members for doing what you ask of them. For example, you could offer 1,500 eaves to each member who clicks your Facebook page link and likes it. Or you could offer 2,000 eaves for each member who follows you on Twitter.

It’s a great way to kick start engagement on your social networking channels. 

Measurement Tool

One of the great pieces of Empire Avenue is the measurement tools. Empire Avenue has some great charts and metrics to help give you a sense of how effective your social media channels are.   The main measurement Empire Avenue shows you is the quality of your content vs your audience. 

There are other tools out there from other sites that give you a deeper look at your individual networks, but for a quick glance across all of your channels, Empire Avenue offers a pretty nice tool for free.

Bottom Line

Empire Avenue is another social media channel you should consider. But like most social media channels, you will only get out what you put in. 

Creative Commons and Flickr: Get Your Photos Out There!

Collin checking out an experiment at the science fair #electric #currents #sphere #science #fair #child #handI’ve enjoyed photography as a hobby (and as a business at one point) for many years. While it’s great to look at my photos and say, wow, I did this, it’s even more satisfying when someone else looks at my photos and says, “wow, you did this?”

Besides the obvious ego-stroking, there’s promotional value to getting your pictures out in the wild. Licensing your pictures for free use through Flickr and Creative Commons makes it quick and easy for bloggers to use your photography to illustrate their most recent blog post.

Currently I license my photography under the Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0) license which means:

  • Users are welcome to use my photography without making a request to me.
  • If you use my work you must credit it to me as Flickr.com/MrBeck, with a link back to my Flickr.com profile. (Flickr provides code so the picture itself is linked)
  • Use my picture as-is, no derivative works. (i.e. Changing the color tone of the picture for a HOPE poster.)
  • Do not use my picture in a way that suggests I endorse the blogger or the use of my work

You can see some of the places (67 and counting) that have used my photography by clicking here. And that’s just the places I could find online. Who knows how many times my photography has been used in offline projects These are all free links coming back to one of my social profiles. What’s not to love about that?

QR Code for picplz Android Market

QR Code for picplz on the Android Market

QR Code for Instagram iPhone iTunes

QR Code for Instagram on iPhone App Store

With great mobile photography tools like Instagram out there it has become even easier for people to create images that bloggers and web designers will want to use for their content.  If you have an iPhone you can get started with Instagram, and for those of you who have an Android phone you can use an app called picplz. All you need to do is link your picplz or Instagram account to Flickr, set your default licensing type in your Flickr account, and you’re off to the races.

I wholeheartedly support Creative Commons licensing and applaud everyone else who adopts it for their work. I have featured many images over the years of other photographers and given them credit per Flickr and Creative Commons rules.

Are you currently licensing any images through Creative Commons? What’s your take on it?