jon, Author at Outsource Force

Why Local SEO Matter

Posted on February 03, 2013 by jon

It’s quite incredible that despite the sluggish economic situation on a national level, there are still a pretty good number of business endeavors that offer profitable opportunities for those who really bother to look for them. The fact that more websites appear every day on the internet to promote their business products and services just shows that the online market has a lot to offer. With more websites online, internet users are presented with an even wider array of choices in terms of the products, services or information one is looking for.

Every business entrepreneur knows that creating public awareness on the products and services is the key to a successful business. And most of the time, businesses prefer to have their business advertised on a wider scope in order to reach to more people. A national level advertising would naturally target more internet users who can be potential customers. This strategy should work well if the local market is not neglected or ignored.

Targeting a wide area to get the products known is understandable as businesses would prefer to have more people know the product. However, the efforts should not exclude the local market because it offers a significantly viable source of customers. By customizing the website’s SEO techniques and strategies to target the local market, businesses are bound to benefit more.

Local business owners who optimize their websites to cater to local market stand a high chance of successfully sustaining their business with a lot of room for growth. And since over a billion local searches are done every month, focusing the SEO efforts on local targets should be the best way to go forward as there is less competition. Hence, there’s a bigger chance of topping the search result when there is less competition.

Local SEO helps improve the site traffic and diverts more visitors to your site. It will bring more targeted inquiries made via phone calls or email messages as people searching locally are on their buying state. With the help of Google Maps, a physical store can be easily located and having presence on Google Maps imposes legitimate business entity. Regardless if you are a small or big player, the internet offers a level playing field for businesses to compete through local SEO techniques.

For example, a search for products and services that comes with a local identifier will bring your search results page which include a map on the top right hand of the screen. The map will show businesses deemed relevant by the search engine to a specific search criteria. Hence, if your site is targeted for a specific geographic location, it will appear on Google+ listings, and if your site is optimized such that Google will recognize the relevance and quality of your listing, you should be able to end up in multiple first page listings.

Like the general rule in search engine optimization, strategies that works for a business with wider audience also works with businesses with limited target audience. Techniques like on-site optimization and off-site optimization which includes local social media marketing, local directory submission, local forum participation, local competitor analysis, etc. works wonders in topping the search result.

Compared to a non-geographically-targeted search, local search is less competitive but equally rewarding. Advertising your business locally competes with fewer businesses under the same search criteria which is the opposite when advertising nationally. Optimizing the website for the local market therefore can almost guarantee a bigger slice of the local market.

Facebook’s Graph Search Beta

Posted on January 27, 2013 by jon

Graph search beta was unveiled on January 15, 2013 for Facebook users. This feature is designed to help all the billion-plus Facebook users search for people and places within the social network. The ‘Graph Search’ will allow users to sort through content that has been shared with them.

Guided by Facebook’s mission which is making the world more open and connected, the graph search feature hopes that people will map out their relationships with people and things they care about. Facebook calls it mapping the graph. The feature’s task is big as Facebook is constantly expanding with new people, connections and contents. With its more than a billion people, more than 240 million photos and more than a trillion connections, the task is gargantuan.

With ‘Graph Search’, Facebook users will have a new way of navigating these connections to make them more useful. This newest feature will appear as a bigger search bar at the top of each page. When a search is made, such search will determine the results you get plus the search query becomes the title of the page. The title can be edited which will actually allow a unique custom view of the contents shared by friends on Facebook.

Different from web search, an example of a search query in Graph Search will be something like “my friends who love surfing”. Combined phrases, not keywords will define your search criteria in order to get results showing a set of people, places, photos or other content, relevant to the query, that’s been shared on Facebook.

And unlike web search, Graph Search is built from the start with privacy in mind. Every piece of content on Facebook has its own defined audience and most of the content is not available for public viewing. Graph Search respects that privacy and audience. It makes finding new things much easier without disrupting privacy.

The first version of Graph Search tackles four main areas – people, photos, places, and interests.

People. Facebook users can search for “friends who live in my city,” “people from my city who like hiking,” “friends of friends who attended the New Year countdown in NY,” “software programmers who graduated from MIT,” “people who like things I like,” “people who play tennis and live nearby.” You can add any specific criteria to the search query that will make you find people within your social network.
Photos. Facebook users can search for “photos I like,” “photos of my family,” “photos of my friends in High School,” “photos of my friends taken in DC,” “photos of the Eiffel Tower”, etc.
Places. Search queries may run like, “restaurants in San Francisco,” “countries visited by my family,” “Italian restaurants in the US liked by my friends from Italy,” “tourist destinations in Asia visited by friends,” “Malls in New York liked by my friends,” or “countries my friends have visited.”
Interests. This will search for “music like by my friends,” “movies I watched and other people watched,” “languages my friends speak,” “video games played by friends online,” “books read by CEOs,” etc.

According to Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, “Graph Search is a really big product. It’s going to take years and years to index the whole map of the graph and everything we have out there.” The CEO is hopeful that more people will get their hands on Graph Search in the coming weeks and months.

Facebook has made another milestone in making search for information and interest easier for its user. A different user experience is defined by this graph search for a user will not be redirected to another website when it clicks on a certain result. This is yet another first for search. If users will embrace this change, then search is heading on another direction in which Facebook becomes the benchmark of the new way of search.

With these in mind, a lot of questions came out. Questions like “how is this graph search going to send social signals to known search engines and help website rank?,” “will the old optimization techniques in Facebook still work for search engines?,” “if people embraces this new kind of search, how is it going to affect searches in search engines?,” etc.

How Can Geo Segmentation Help Your PPC Campaign?

Posted on January 23, 2013 by jon

Geo-segmentation or Geo-targeting refers to website advertising campaign which is focused on targeting specific location. As local search marketing is increasingly becoming important as a way of achieving geographic targets, segmenting your PPC campaigns and ad groups can definitely have a huge impact on key metrics like conversion volume and CPA – cost per acquisition. Google allows advertisers to target PPC and other ads by geographic regions, according to a preset list of countries, US states and specific US metropolitan areas. Geo-targeting is achieved by identifying the searcher’s IP address and consequently the geographical location of the searcher. Geo-segmented pay per click campaign ads are displayed only to searchers viewing Google in the targeted area or location. For website marketers, this is an important factor.

For businesses running on tight budget which limits the expanse of marketing message that should reach the broadest audience, this may not be such a bad thing. Great results can still be achieved even on a slim budget allocation. While the usual pay per click ads are meant to bombard your target customers, limiting the reach or scope of the PPC ads into specific and defined geographic locations will reduce the volume of non-converting clicks and impressions in the paid campaign. Geo-segmenting or geo-targeting is still underutilized and overlooked by many internet marketers.

By finding the geographic areas or location that have the highest click through rates, your pay per click ad may be segmented and diverted specifically at those identified locations and areas. There are some analytic tools that can be used to determine where the CTRs and visitor activity is coming from. Accessing your Google Analytic profiles will give you data on clicks on conversions from specific regions. Using this information, you can direct your PPC ads accordingly.

At this point, you are now presented with information that will help you manage your PPC ads and spread them out to the segmented customers according to geographic market locations. You can then create new PPC ads geo-targeted towards the high-conversion markets. You can then allocate a bigger chunk of the PPC ads budget to the high-performing markets, squeezing more conversions out of a limited allocation.

With the data from your analytics, you will be able to strip off pay per click campaigns in areas or markets that showed zero conversions for the past 12 months. The budget allocation for zero-performing areas may then be diverted to the high-performing markets. Caution should be exercised though to make sure that the identified non-performing areas or markets are genuinely of no benefit to the paid ads. It might be good to use other analytic tools to check on other possible ways that they can be converting. It will not be a good idea to lose a profitable and viable market just because they’re not performing according to the criteria of one analytic as they could be converting in different ways.

With geo-segmentation, you may need to adjust the times during which your ads show depending on the identified areas or regions. As regions are separated so must the ads be adjusted in those aspects. A standardized timetable for all PPC ads won’t perform as highly when you’re geo-targeting. It is important that the ads display during the appropriate time of day.

Since pay per click advertising can be costly, geo segmentation or targeting is done to achieve higher conversion rate. It is also done if your business can only serve a limited or specific geographical location. In essence, geo segmentation is practiced to cut on cost and to set high priority on areas that have high potential to convert and to the only areas being covered by the business.

Migrating a Website from Old URL to a New URL

Posted on January 17, 2013 by jon

I am sharing this article to help businesses that were hit or penalized by one of Google’s algorithm updates recover from it, or get over it and move on. If you are one of those unlucky website owners, this may be helpful. Don’t just wait for a miracle to come and hoping that Google would forgive you from the mistakes you’ve done. It’s not going to happen.

THE SCENARIO:

A cosmetic plastic surgeon owns a website that was hit by the Google penguin update on March 2012. From being on the first page, to not being listed on the top 100 of the SERP is quite a shock to him especially for his business. He’s been using a SEO company for a year who’s doing blackhat technique since the beginning, not to his knowledge of course. Not to mention the duplicate content of the website copied from another website. Anyway, how in the world that a doctor would know what blackhat or whitehat SEO means?

After the website was wiped out from the top search result, he continued to pay the company for more months as they promised they will do something to get the ranking back, but nothing has improved.

Finally on September 2012 (after 6 months), he decided to move on and wanted to start a new website.

THE DILEMMA:

Yeah okay, we are starting a new website. But what do we do with the old website?

Those pages, images, and URL’s are still indexed on Google. Somewhere, somehow those will appear during a search query and people will still click on it. We can’t just delete them all, as it will return a 404 error and it will take forever for Google to de-index a page or remove a page from it’s search result. A 301 redirect wasn’t the best option as well as we don’t want any of the seo value of the old website to carry over to the new website.

THE VERDICT:

So here are the following steps that we did that you can also do for your own website.

Get a new domain. Make sure it’s relevant to your brand or it has to be keyword-rich at least. Don’t worry about the Exact Match Domain (EMD) update. As long as you’re going to work on your website and load it with quality content, you are safe.
Write fresh, unique, quality, and relevant content that people will actually read.
Add a robots.txt on the old website. We want Google to totally de-index and not crawl the website anymore at all. Eventually, these pages will just disappear on the search result.
Add a redirect instead of just deleting the entire website. We don’t want the old pages to return a 404 error while it’s still on the search result and while people can still click on it.
Use 302 instead of 301 to redirect all the old pages to the new URL. The reason to this is clear – we don’t want the seo value of the old website.
Optimize the new website using whitehat technique focusing on writing valuable relevant content and building quality links, while waiting for the old website to vanish from the search result.

THE OUTCOME:

The result is awesome so far. We started seeing ranking improvement of our target keywords in 3 months or even less. We are now on the 4th month of the optimization process, and Yey! some of our keywords are already on the 2nd page of the SERP.

Now we know that ranking is really not just all that. So we made sure that the traffic has improved and that they’re converting. The client is happy and so are we.

Click here to visit our portfolio page for more information.

Google Authorship Analytics

Posted on January 13, 2013 by jon

Google has always been on the lookout for ways to serve internet searchers with the highest quality content possible in the World Wide Web. This objective drives them to constantly update their algorithms hoping to weed out undeserving contents out of the cyber world. They keep on developing new ways to help users and searchers find the most relevant information they need from the gazillion contents floating in the internet cyberspace. They have launched Google+ and authorship as an interesting option for Google+ users and recently, Authorship Analytics.

Authorship Analytics show traffic to pages identifying you as the author of such page, where the content that you have published using your Google+ account is connected through the Rel=Author markup. When someone clicks your page and your content appears as a result of a search/click, the user will view your page presented with a link to your Google+ profile, thumbnail image and the number of circles you belong to on the social network. This Authorship Analytics is found just below the “Have You in Circles” tab on the right hand section of your Google+ profile page. Clicking this tab will take the users to a new page where all the pertinent analytics data are presented, giving the users a comprehensive overview of the performance of your published content.

There are two simple steps involved in using Google Authorship Analytics:

Create a Google+ profile page. Upload a high quality headshot and complete the information as much as you can.
Go to plus.google.com/authorship. Sign up with your email and click on the verification link Google will send you. For those who don’t want to verify their email address, they can also link their content to their Google profile.

Authors will be able to check how their Google+ profile is appearing in search results and their click through rate. This Google tool is good for authors to distinguish and validate their contents in search results, to get more followers on Google+ and to help users discover your other content on the web. Similarly, Google Authorship Analytics is good for the web as it helps users find high quality and relevant content and it empowers users to engage with quality content authors through Google+. Users will be able to screen the pages that show up in their search results and click only those whose analytics show good performance.

Google Authorship Analytics work both for content writers and content marketers. Content writers who sign up for Google Authorship Analytics can claim their articles, gain recognition and have higher search rankings through Google+. They will have firsthand information and insight into the performance of their work/content. It is also a fascinating insight on how Google continues to incorporate social media and how it can benefit the users or searchers.

With Authorship, searchers can find authors they know and trust. In this sense, content marketers will know and identify who has gained trust and authority in the search results of Google. They can use this information in planning their SEO campaigns and activities for the sites they are developing. Also, Google authorship shows a writer’s expertise. It let users identify a writer’s niche through the articles the writer have written. You can also refer to this article to better understand how Google authorship affects ranking in search.

Web Design Designing Principles

Posted on January 08, 2013 by jon

Most web designers say that it is not so much of the visual design that counts when it comes to successfully designing or developing a design for a website. More importance is given to functionality and good user experience as websites are intended for online visitors or users who are looking for something that are contained in the website. A user-centered design has become a standard way of approaching a design task for any website, following the principle that satisfied users will undoubtedly return to the website which in turn could translate to commercial success.

An effective website design therefore requires combined elements of usability, functionality and quality content, that is, relevant information which the users or internet searchers are apparently looking from your website. Web designers also keep in mind that users do not read – they scan. Instead of reading every textual line, users search for some fixed points or anchors, which would guide them through the content of the page. As such, designers are guided by the following design principles:

Don’t make me think.. Web designers are tasked with creating a simple and understandable visual flow for the users. This means that the web page should be obvious and self-explanatory. Users should no longer be forced to think of what the website is all about or what the page contains. In order to accomplish this, web designers should be able to create a web page that is easy to navigate and where buttons or menus will lead exactly to the intended content. A web page should have moderate visual clues and a clear and systematic structure which will enable users to find their path to their browsing goals.
Keep user requirements minimal. For first time visitors, it might be acceptable for them to fill out short forms and share some information like email address and other personal information. But it won’t be advisable for designers to bombard the users with a lot of requirements to comply with just to be able to test a feature on the web page. Users are not likely to return to the site that has more than the essential user requirements.
Create specific points for users to focus their attention. Websites do have static and dynamic content, and some aspects of both can get the attention of the user. For example, an eye-catching image can easily divert the attention of a user from reading a textual content. In the same manner, text contents which are highlighted or marked bold or in different font type may also turn the user away from the image to check out what the content is all about. A web design should be able to mark both static and dynamic contents with some elements that will get the attention of the users.
Keep the site features obvious. By presenting clearly what the site or page wants the users to do, web designers should infuse visually appealing guide or 1-2-3-done-steps that will lead the visitors and users through the site content in a less-complicated and more user-friendly way.

Functional web design -- Web Development Philippines

Adjust the writing style. In most cases, promotional write-ups may not win the attention of the users or visitors. There’s no room for long text blocks without photos. Readers prefer short but concise sentences which drive the point home. Web designers should avoid marketing-associated words or phrases, clever names and unfamiliar technical terms. By being precise with the wordings, users are able to appreciate the content more.
Keep it simple and easy to understand. This should be the working guideline and principle of any website design. Most users visit a site, not to enjoy the design but to look for the information they need regardless of how the site looks like. Web designers should strive for utmost simplicity but without missing visual satisfaction.
Make use of spacing – line, padding and white space. Spacing makes things clearer. While others may think that empty spaces are wasteful, the opposite is true. White or empty space provides balance, contrast and proportion to a web page.
Font Types. Text is an essential element on a website design and web designers should consider the font type, size, spacing, line length and color.

Keeping the essential design principles in mind while the website is in the completion process, the end result will not only leave the website owners satisfied; it will also leave the users contented with the design, content and functionality. Coming up with great web design and developing a well-organized website requires people who has the eye for design and skills in creating efficient website.

Outsource Force’s Successful Online Marketing Journey with Ten Great Companies in 2012

Posted on January 06, 2013 by jon

Outsource Force ended the year 2012 with an incredible line-up of mixed local and international clients, all of which have placed their full and complete trust in Outsource Force’s undeniable reliability in giving their clients maximum online visibility and high page rankings. Strengthening their local and international customer base, Outsource Force successfully guided each client in making sure to achieve both short and long-term target goals for the company and the business with precise steps.

Outsource Force’s impressive SEO track record convinced new clients with existing but relatively invisible websites to take a step up to put to test what Outsource Force claims they could do to their websites. And they couldn’t be happier with the results of the big gamble they took.

Satisfied and successful clients include a holiday apartment in Bordeaux, France (Bordeaux Apartment); a dental office in Mississauga (St Lawrence Dentistry); a law firm in Phuket, Thailand (Haris & Hawryluk); a travel guide in the Philippines (Islands of the Philippines); and a global business news and information website (Business Marketing Press). These companies enjoy first and second page ranking from SERPs.

Other relatively new clients building up their online presence are a Muay Thai training camp in Phuket (Singpatong Sitnumnoi); a Philippine-based cosmetic surgery clinic (Enhancements Cosmetic Surgery); and a Thai-based audit, finance and accounting service firm (The Phoenix Capital Group). These companies are slowly establishing their presence and in no time will be ranked high by Google and other search engines.

The company is also proud of the websites they have accomplished which were a paper and office supplies trading company in the Philippines (Five Stallon Trading) and a LED TV distributing company in the Philippines (Skyworth Philippines). These companies only acquired the web design and development services offered by Outsource Force.

Undoubtedly a force to reckon with when it comes to SEO strategies and website development, Outsource Force has not only helped these nine companies (some with low or no page rank) climb to the first 2 pages of the SERPs and have a functional and appealing website design. Outsource Force also gave their clients the opportunity to enjoy the feeling of receiving the volume of site traffic and sales conversions from the time of its engagement up to the present.

Proud of its achievements in 2012, the company continues to explore more new and innovative ways to hone their expertise in their craft and is continually committed in their advocacy to enforce time-tested and acceptable industry and good business practices that will reap tangible results for the clients. Generally unsupportive of blackhat SEO techniques, Outsource Force maintains its integrity intact by not succumbing to dirty and malicious tactics in SEO. And when it comes to creating functional and appealing web design, the company never settles for anything less.

If you’re interested to have an online presence, you can visit Outsource Force’s website to know more about the online marketing services they offer.

5 Effective Ways to Check if Your Competitor is Doing Negative SEO for your Website

Posted on January 01, 2013 by jon

Every website owner is prone to negative SEO attacks especially from competitors. These negative attacks can come in a few forms. In a general sense, negative SEO are those tactics employed by some website owners who buy links from link farms and point them at a competitor’s website in an effort and desire to drag the competitor’s rankings down or have it totally disappeared in search engine results page ranking. Other negative SEO attacks may also include tactics such as hacking a website to cause malicious damage on a website, or by simply reporting another website’s “black hat” SEO tactics to Google, and do review bombing where a large number of 5-star reviews at a business making it look like the website paid for them.

A website owner, therefore, has to be vigilant and watch out for obvious and not so obvious signs that a competitor is doing negative SEO on your website. Some of the effective ways to check this include:

Monitor Your Backlink Profile and Check for Paid Linking. This is one tactic commonly used by competitors to attack a website by having thousands of links pointing to the website even if there is no relevance to the website. Tools like SEOMoz’s Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO, and Google Webmaster Tools may be used to check the backlink profile.
Check if Your Content is Duplicated. Competitors will attempt to copy a site’s content to make it look like they own the content and being copied by the original site. This can be prevented by using an absolute rel=canonical tag on pages to help establish that your site is the owner of such content. Make a Google search containing a sentence from your webpage within quotes and you will see which websites contain the same content as yours.
Fake reviews. Adding fake reviews to a business listing is one tactic done by competitors to make it look like that the business is creating the review for their site. This could get Google to remove the reviews from the business listing. This can be checked by monitoring reviews relevant to your site or business and use the “report a problem” link to notify Google of the suspected negative SEO attack.
Site Speed. There are ways to prevent malicious crawlers from accessing your site but it has to be done carefully so as not to block legitimate search engine crawlers from navigating your site. A method to check for malicious crawlers is using the IP addresses of Google and Bing to detect and stop bad crawlers.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) removal requests. This is the most effective negative SEO done by competitors. What competitors do is to send email notifying the Webmaster that the page containing a link to your site is considered a copyright infringement and should be removed immediately. This can be monitored by keeping an eye on new referral traffic in analytics, which help identify new links worth thanking. By establishing a relationship with the site that provided the link through a thank-you email can help keep that link permanent.

While competitors can launch such negative SEO attacks on your website, your best defense is making sure that your website has solid white hat search engine optimization strategies and constantly monitoring important ranking metrics for foul play. It will also help to maintain an open and honest relationship with Google in order to keep long standing rankings.

Establishing standards in doing pure white label search engine optimization tactics is easy if you have it in-house. But, if you outsource your Internet marketing campaign, particularly SEO, you have to ask your online marketing provider to present reports that they do white hat search engine optimization tactics. You could also ask your internet marketing service provider to look out for the possibility of negative SEO tactics being done by industry competitors.

Ranking in search engine results page could really be achieved by businesses that adhere to the guidelines of major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Once ranking is achieved, industry competitors who do not know how to do friendly competition will surely do what they do best, their dirty game of pulling your business down. To prevent your website from being penalized and pulled down, proper precautions and constant monitoring must be done to land on higher SERP ranking or to sustain the achieved SERP ranking.

Philippines as the Best Offshore Outsourcing Hub for SEO

Posted on December 23, 2012 by jon

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is an integral part of online marketing process. SEO services facilitate brand visibility and higher search engine rankings. For most businesses, the importance of search engine optimization is not to be ignored because achieving increased online visibility and higher rankings with search engines will largely depend on the search engine optimization strategies implemented for the business’ website.

The Philippines has innumerable SEO Companies mostly sought by foreign clients like the United States of America, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and European countries. Its biggest rival is India, but reports have it that the Philippines may soon emerge as the best offshore outsourcing hub for SEO. Industry experts are predicting that by 2016 the industry is bound to grow to US$20 billion in terms of revenue and 900,000 in terms of employees.

Like any other business process outsourced to the Philippines, the Filipinos continues to deliver expert and professional services in terms of online marketing outsourcing. Having in-depth research and development to the methodologies used in the said field to stay current is a standard in Philippine SEO companies. Quickly adapting to changes to keep up with the ever demanding search standard is one of the things Filipinos possess in order to deliver promised results.

Why the Philippines?

There are hundreds if not thousands of SEO company in the Philippines, equipped with the necessary experience, expertise, training and skills. The Philippine culture and orientation is familiarly close to the western culture, thus allowing for a better understanding of the needs of the clients from the US and other western countries. In terms of business principles, the Philippines stand very close to the principles adhered to by the western counterparts.

More importantly, the Philippines have thousands of technically skilled and highly trained workers whose righteous orientation and work ethics are not matched by rivals like India. The Filipino workers are known globally to deliver the expected results from the tasks given to them. They are preferred because of their unique working qualities, earning them the respect and high regard of most of the overseas employers or business counterparts.

The Philippines is proud to have 80% of the labor market to be literate. Workers are multi-lingual, the country being the second largest English-speaking country in the world. The language edge has become the Philippines’ top qualification followed by its expertise in search engine optimization and other online marketing services.

Due to Google’s algorithm update, which penalizes spammy websites, more SEO businesses were directed to SEO Company in the Philippines because of their ethically compliant optimization methodologies and practices. This has proven the integrity and high ethical values of the Filipino workers. Hence, a lot of overseas companies have turned to the SEO savvy island of the Philippines for much of their SEO services requirements.

Today, there are thousands of SEO practitioners from the various search engine optimization companies providing services for companies in the United States of America, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and other western countries. This shows that a great number of international companies are relying on the Filipino workforce in terms of digital marketing, particularly search engine optimization to successfully deliver their search engine optimization requirements and needs.

To sum it up, the Philippines has proven to the international market that it is the best country when it comes to outsourcing their SEO services. Choosing the Philippines will give the following benefits to the international company: lower labor cost, highly skilled human resources, culture adaptability and compatibility, language and government support. In no time, it is expected that more international companies will outsource their operations in the Philippines to take advantage of these benefits and to keep up with their competitors who are already availing the services of the Filipino SEO experts.

Instagram’s Right to Sell a User’s Photo Without Permission

Posted on December 19, 2012 by jon

Instagram is the now popular free photo-sharing service bought by Facebook for around a billion dollars in April, having over 100 million registered users since Facebook’s acquisition. Confusion, anger and displeasure dominated the internet community with Facebook’s decision to update Instagram’s terms of service and privacy policy which were taken in the context of Facebook retaining the right to use publicly posted Instagram photos for any purpose it deems fit. This is according to the new terms of service posted by Facebook on December 17, 2012.

The new and updated terms and privacy policy will be introduced and be effective on January 16, 2013. The updated terms posted insinuated that Facebook/Instagram has the right to sell the Instagram photos without the need for permission from the owners of the photos. Worse, any revenue generated from such sale will not be shared with the Instagram photo owners.

The Monday post generated enough ire from Facebook and Instagram users, not understanding why such new policies will be implemented without regard for the users’ say on the matter. The issue took an instant, violent reactions to surface on the web as irate Instagram users criticize the new terms and policy.

The heat created by such reactions to the new terms elicited an immediate response from Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom who clarified the policy and made it clear on December 18, 2012 that Instagram will not sell user photos without their permission, pointing to the wordings used in the new terms of service as to be blamed for the confusion.

The Instagram co-founder explained that the reason for updating the terms of service was to communicate to the users about Instagram’s plan to experiment with innovative advertising which was wrongly interpreted by many.Systrom explained that the update was brought about by an “advertising scheme on Instagram that might include promoted posts, and in order to help make a relevant promotion, it would be helpful to see which of the people you follow also follow the business.” In such case, it will be inevitable to see some of the data posted, like the actions taken and the profile photo, show up in the ads.

As a matter of clarification, Systrom made it clear that Instagram has no intention of selling the user’s photos. Where the language in the terms of service caused the confusion, Systrom informed the public that the same language will be removed to fix the mistake and eliminate the confusion.

Systrom continued by stressing that Instagram users own their photos and that Instagram wants its users to feel comfortable sharing photos and that will be respected. In conclusion Systrom confirmed that privacy settings will remain intact as the public is advised to check the new updated terms that will remove the confusing wordings and clear up any misunderstanding of Instagram’s real intention.