Instagram is building a profitable business. Which means walking a fine line between maximizing revenue and delivering experience. The problem is that you can’t fault Instagram, or any of the other service out there that’s playing the attention web game. There is already enough marketing going on on Instagram, giving anybody the ability to link anything, everywhere for free would only worsen the situation and, on the long run, cause Instagram to lose users. It’s we, the people of the internet, who have set the rules of engagement. We want our web and we want it for free. However, the inconvenient truth is that there is a cost to doing business and at some point companies have to make money. How the interplay between revenue and experience can change when pressure is applied from The Street on a quarterly basis. Decisions are not always as cut and dry as one would like them to be in an ideal, human-centered world.
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