What The Facebook Instagram Acquisition Teaches About The Future of Digital Marketing

Facebook recently purchased Instagram for a billion dollars, leading many to question what Zuckerberg's intent is. The jury's still out, but the speculation alone tells us something about where the internet is headed in the years to come. What does all of this mean, and how will it affect the way we market ourselves online? Here are a few thoughts.

Is This About Data?

Instagram is a mobile photo sharing app that's available for free, so the immediate question is how it's going to be monetized. One of the first responses from the online community was that this purchase was all about data. Many people are already starting to question how this will affect their privacy.

Will Instagram be using the mobile location data, tags, and images for data mining? Will they sell this information to their advertisers, or use it to give advertisers better targeting capabilities?

There's no way to know for sure, but all this speculation points to a very important way social media is fundamentally changing our lives. Data about customers is becoming increasingly easy to come across. By the same token, your own data is also easier to access.

Even if it isn't, as openness becomes the norm, consumers start to question why you are keeping everything quiet in the first place.

There are two takeaway points for marketers.

1. The consumer data market is growing - If you aren't monitoring what your customers, and potential customers, are doing, you could end up falling behind. Your competitors will increasingly use this data to optimize their platforms, improve their marketing efforts, and improve their products. Consumers will start to expect a more personalized experience. At the same time, privacy is a concern, and excessive data mining could creep out customers.

2. Companies will become more transparent - Users will be far more comfortable with the fact that companies are mining their data if those companies are public about everything they are doing. Companies that insist on collecting information without giving any away will start being seen as tyrants of the old world. Transparency is the way to grab attention and be nonthreatening in the years to come.

The Visual Web is Here

Humans are visual creatures, so it shouldn't be too surprising that the web is growing more visual everyday. Ignoring Instagram, the popularity of Flickr, Tumblr, and Pinterest should make it clear just how important visual elements are becoming. The fact that Facebook was willing to shell out $1 billion to invest in the future of the visual web is further proof of this.

Virtual Reality Was Wrong

In the 1980s, most futurists believed the internet was going to bring us into an age of virtual reality. Instead, what we are seeing is a merging of the virtual and the real. We go online to see what is happening in the real world, and we turn to our mobile phones in order to enhance our real world experiences.

If Instagram's popularity teaches us anything, it's that a strong presence in the real world is going to dramatically improve upon a strong presence in the virtual world. If people love sharing photos with one another, businesses should be thinking about ways to get themselves into those photos. These lessons can be carried to other platforms like Foursquare and Twitter, and to a lesser extent every other social network.

Is Facebook Afraid?

With so many questioning why Facebook purchased Instagram, some are starting to wonder if it was a move made purely out of fear. Did they buy it specifically because they thought it was getting too big? Did they think it might become a competitor if they ever figured out how to monetize it? Will Facebook's strategy be to buy every potential competitor before it's too late?

This gives marketers yet another thing to think about. Considering how quickly previous social networks like MySpace and Friendster evaporated, it's a mistake to think that anything is stable. Any company that is focusing entirely on the number of "likes," tweets, and shares should be conce
ed by this. All of those numbers could disappear ove
ight.

If, on the other hand, you've built a genuinely engaged audience and a strong brand, this shouldn't be cause for concern.

That's our take on things. Why do you think Facebook bought Instagram, and what does it mean for us?