Prepare for massive, sustained grumbling from the Instagram community… because the once ad-free, creative wonderland called Instagram wants to get a lot more commercial. Not that this should come as a big surprise or anything…

I’ve been spitballing ideas for how to monetize Instagram since long before it was even acquired by Facebook, not to brag or anything Because, well… when you’ve got over 100M users, and your only income is VC money, you have a very serious choice to make. Instagram’s choice was to accept an acquisition deal from FB…

As a result, Instagram will soon go into the ad business… in much the same way its parent company does. The model, according to The Atlantic, will feature ads that appear to be endorsements (though you won’t have any control over them), sent out to your followers based on metadata like location.

Of course, many of Instagram’s users feel betrayed… but that’s simply because they mistook Instagram’s business model as a statement. Like most social platforms, Instagram simply needed to reach a critical mass in terms of active users before it could begin to sell ads.

To do this, the software and access were not only free, but also ad-free… and users got comfortable with the idea that it would be that way forever. Of course, Instagram was never designed to be non-profit enterprise.

The Flaw in the Free Model?

According to some of the folks who feel betrayed, this is inherent flaw in the free software model… that we should all boycott free software and start embracing the paid model from day one…

Because that’s the only way to support a new platform without getting unintentionally hijacked by the software’s advertising mechanism later on down the road.

The problem with this impractical argument is that, for an app or social software to truly succeed, it MUST reach critical mass. I mean, you wouldn’t be on Instagram if your friends weren’t, right? And the chances of reaching that  critical mass without a free trial/lead gen period is incredibly small. It’s just marketing 101…

What do you think? Would you ever have created an Instagram account if you’d have had to pay for the app? Would your friends?

UPDATE 12/21: Instagram has responded to the backlash with this release. Basically, instead of stealthily claiming the right to use your photos in future TBD forms of advertising… Instagram has back peddled. Here’s what they say:

Going forward, rather than obtain permission from you to introduce possible advertising products we have not yet developed, we are going to take the time to complete our plans, and then come back to our users and explain how we would like for our advertising business to work.