Content Wars: Instagram Privacy update and opportunity for Flickr?

Yesterday, there was a lot of activity on twitter related to the Instagram new terms of services (TOS). Instragram plans to productize  the millions of user generated content which happens to be the  beautiful photographs created by its free users of the service. Users are strongly protesting the change in TOS and plan to discontinue use of the Instagram service. Instagram built up its subscriber base by offering a great product packaged with a  free service to lure in professional photographers and content publishers to share content through its service. After the acquisition by Facebook, there is tremendous pressure to monetize the content to drive revenues. The crux of the problem is on ownership of the content. The content producers are against using their user generated content. This debate raises an interesting question on user content leveraging free services like Instagram, Flikr and drop box to share and collaborate. It is an important question that needs to be answered for the future of the web based on social media. At the end of the day, social media companies need to monetize and will use the user generated content for selling adds, analyzing patterns and selling data to 3rd party companies. As a consumer of such services, we need to take a call on adopting such freemium services vs the cost of our privacy. The updated TOS by Instagram may open the door for competitors like Flickr who are pro consumer in terms of the service agreement on content use.

Machine Learning and AI is taking over our lives

Google has added futurist and artificial intelligence guru Ray Kurzweil as Director of Technology. The hire highlights the growing importance of machine learning to the internet, search and discovery and everything from self driving cars to analyzing documents. Machine learning is transitioning in a big way from the R&D labs into mainstream consumer and enterprise applications. 2013 will be even bigger with several Big Data processes incorporating machine learning. Ray truly believes in artificial intelligence growing beyond the capabilities of humans. With the availability of massive amounts of computing power through cloud computing and SSD storage, its time for the machines to really step into the mainstream and take over duties performed by humans. It may sound futuristic but so was the idea of the internet taking over our communication.