But you still can't click a link in a comment or hit a buy button... Why? My wife follows tons of fashion labels- it's a no brainer for her to pick up a dress with Stripe in Instagram. Why not have users opt in to ads since they're already following companies they love! Seems like a missed opportunity for the company and the user, but perhaps I'm missing something.

My mom quite accidentally turned a hobby into a small business by participating in instagram circles for homemade cheese, pottery and artisinal yarn. Posting her own stuff she built a following, people started inquiring about how to buy. She would announce her presence in an upcoming craft sale, but by the time the sale started everything she had to sell was reserved on instagram. Now most of what she makes goes straight to artsy shops in funky shopping districts.

My sister is a tattoo artist, she too has engendered quite the instagram following posting her work, which draws clients into the shop.

People participating in these sorts of communities enjoy the fact that nobody's clubbing them over the head with a 'buy' button, and because of that the level of engagement is much higher than it is on a site like Etsy, for instance.

Instagrammers follow somebody for a few weeks or months, and when they're ready to buy, they make an inquiry, and by that point they're willing to go to any length to get their hands on the product. It's the diametric opposite of impulse buying. The ongoing and intimate narrative is essential to cultivating this, and the absence of a buy button makes it a very inviting place for the types who are into that sort of thing.

> Instagrammers follow somebody for a few weeks or months, and when they're ready to buy, they make an inquiry, and by that point they're willing to go to any length to get their hands on the product. It's the diametric opposite of impulse buying.

Isn't this just because Instagram makes impulse buying nearly impossible? To make a sale on Instagram, you have to cultivate a serious following who will go to great lengths to buy from you, because it's so hard to buy anything from an Instagrammer.

Upvoted nonetheless, because those examples of how people find business opportunities through Instagram are great.

It's really not that hard to get from instagram to a transactional interface hosted on some other website. I don't think instagram never had any intent of being useful as a marketing platform for certain kinds of small businesses, it emerged that way organically. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

This is exactly how I've built my custom knife collection. I spend so much money on Instagram

From a "sometimes photographer of fashion stuff" this drives me insane. For one of the key demographics of the application, and an obvious driver of use - IGs link-phobia cuts off the ability to easily and specifically credit a scene: Makeup, set, styling, prop-houses, etc. It's galling.

It seems like many credit these things by putting account tags over the photo itself. Likewise for the brand of a piece of clothing, etc.

There is shopable Instagram. http://digiday.com/brands/four-retailers-tackling-shoppable-...

You also have to ask where does the buying cycle and Instagram intersect: http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/buying-cycle-and-triggers/

The reality is that the ecosystem just isn't there to fully support cost per acquisition based transactions (the name for what your suggesting) in a way that satisfies provider (like Instagram), Brands (like Nike), Platforms (Like amazon, etsy), and Payment processors (this list is huge).

Just what I wanted to say. I'd even click on ad links if they were interesting. Some (increasingly less) Instagram ads are kinda good. Except for video game ones. Very tacky.

link in bio. F#$%!

Which link and which bio are you referring to? (I think the shouting adds nothing of value to the comment).

Currently instagram still disables link in the descriptions of photos. Most brands will revert to putting the relevant link (promos, new launch, blog posts) into the 'Website' part of their profile (bio), then put the "Link in bio" in the photo description.

Does anyone else feel like IG may be jumping the shark by pushing the business angle so hard? This probably sounds ridiculous given their explosive growth, growth that may seem unstoppable at this point. But, BUT, at what point do we all stop and realize that we are choosing to stare at ads all the time? Seriously, what portion of the posts on IG are either overt ads or veiled (artistic) ads? That percentage seems to grow with every post. Remember where IG started and what it exposed us to? I barely do.

Unfollowing is just as easy as following. If somebody chooses to follow an account that ultimately posts too many ads then they can quickly and painlessly unfollow.

The grey area is sponsored content that doesn't identify itself as such and is incredibly common on celebrity twitter/IG accounts. As long as the relationship is clearly identified (and not with an #ad hashtag buried in a pile of other hashtags) I think it's ok.

That grey area is largely what I'm referring to. That, and also hashtag feeds that start as creative outlets and then get saturated with both transparent and veiled advertising. For example, in DC, #aCreativeDC is a very popular hashtag that is full of advertising of some form, albeit often artistic and well done advertising. The same is true for other popular "lifestyle" hashtags (e.g, #nyfoodies etc etc).

Actually it takes one extra tap from my count. :)

A bit offtopic but the switch to business.facebook.com has eliminated a ton of wasted time in my life now that I hardly ever get stuck checking my personal feed.

I don't have a personal Instagram - just a business one, but I'm definitely a fan of them segmenting these services off away from the consumer stuff. Far better productivity. Get in, do your work, and get out.

Things I learned: ICQ still exists.

I was surprised by the same realization!

"By appearing in our featured clients section, ICQ proved it's still in business"

Now that's a success story!

And it's open source: https://github.com/mailru/icqdesktop

Interesting that they use Vimeo to host their marketing video. Perhaps they need FB Video for Business as well.

Off topic but, Vimeo is cheap. Too cheap. ~150$ per year. Unlimited traffic. One of my old clients is using their Pro Plus package as their CDN. They've reduced their CDN bills from tens of thousands of dollars to ~350$ per year. (Vimeo only shows the pricing in Turkish Lira's to me, so real numbers in USD may vary.)

/Completely OT; Nice Username!

Side comment, but what are they using to randomize the CSS selectors and class names? Interesting approach to further minification.

"Inspire People Visually With Your Business' Story". In other words, this is an ad system, not a collaboration system. The title gave the impression that Instagram was planning to compete with Slack.

I like how they try to sell on you on the fact that 75%+ of their users are outside the U.S. as if that's a good thing.

If your business is also outside the US, it is a good thing. US financial services are unreliable for international merchants, and US customers are often not very aware of international arrangements like paying in a foreign currency, the cost of international shipping, business hours not being in one of the US time zones if they want a quick reply to a question, or the native language of a merchant not being English.

The World is a bit bigger than u think...

Yeah but Americans and some Europeans have basically all of the money.

Look up ad rates in the rest of the world and see how lucrative that business is.

I wouldn't say it's a glaring error. It's a stylistic choice, though I will agree that most style guides' guidance (yeah, I chose awkward wording because emphasis) is that you should use the 's after the word if it's singular and doesn't otherwise sound awkward with the extra syllable. Achilles' tendon, for example, would sound awkward if written as Achilles's tendon.

I think the argument could be made that business' sounds better, since business's could easily be confused with the plural form, and three consecutive S letterforms looks awkward. In fact, now that I think about it, I would've written it the same way.

"I think this will be very successful. The roll of storytelling in business is becoming increasingly important, especially for consumer companies targeting millenials. See: http://blog.hubspot.com/opinion/why-storytelling-will-be-the...

Agreed. I think this combined with Snapchat advertising could be the first steps in the direction of changing advertising from the intrusive and unwanted interruption of your daily life to something people actually browse through in order to discover interesting stories and experiences.

However, I also think as social media has proliferated, the definition of the word "brand" has expanded as now more than ever, people are seen as "brands" - often with hundreds of thousands of followers (more than many actual brands and even media companies). As everyone becomes a brand, I believe increasingly the line between marketing and storytelling will be blurred and marketing will become deeply embedded into our culture. Product placement in movies, celebrity endorsement, "native" posts: all these are the first indicators of a culture in which everything is meant to sell something. Whether this is a good thing or not is up for discussion.