Instagram announced Monday that it had reached the 150 million users milestone and was thinking of incorporating advertisements into its website.
It was only this February that world's most popular photo sharing website, Instagram, announced that it had hit the 100 million user mark. Now, 6 months down the line, in another announcement, the website revealed that it had surpassed 150 million users. This is quite a big achievement considering it took Instagram 19 whole months to reach its first 50 million users.
Of course, Facebook's acquisition of the site in April 2012 has significantly fueled and contributed to the growth of Instagram. In a previous announcement, the company revealed that over 60 percent of its users are from countries other than the U.S. and Facebook has been active in marketing Instagram outside the States. Over the years, overall activities on the photo sharing site have also increased with over 55 million photos shared and 2 billion "likes," per day on the network.
According to a new Wall Street Journal report, rumors have it that the network is looking to generate more revenue and will be introducing advertisements "within the next year." The biggest challenge for the company will be to maintain its decorum and not bombard the site with too many advertisements, which might drive off customers. It might also consider taking a page from Facebook and display ads based on user activities rather than posting irrelevant ads.
Privacy has been a contentious issue with both Instagram and its parent company, Facebook. Just last year, Instagram backed off from its decision to lease user-generated images to advertisers. Similarly, Facebook also got involved in a controversial update to its privacy policies, which allows advertisers to access users' profile information for product marketing strategies.
So if Instagram wants to maintain the good relationship it currently shares with its users, it is essential that the company continues to be transparent about the privacy policies. It has nearly a year left to work around how it plans to take things forward. That should be ample time for the popular site to make a good decision to benefit both users and the company.
