It may not be widely known that Facebook owns Instagram, which is probably why they’ve decided to rename it ‘Instagram from Facebook’, but what does this mean for you and your company profile?
Back in March, Facebook revealed it was testing a new name. Now more publicly known, and widely met by criticism, the renaming of Instagram to ‘Instagram from Facebook’ is a move by the company “to be clearer about the products and services that are part of Facebook”. It has also been speculated that perhaps this is a move to try and improve the perceptions of the Facebook brand since its issues with the data breach that cost the business $1.6billion in fines.
Changes to the name of the Instagram app will appear in the log-in screens, and in the Apple iOS and Google Play stores for now, with the potential for it to be added to other areas of the app in future. Although it’s generally a good idea for companies to reinforce their brand by including the parent company name on products, in the case of Facebook, it has a potential to do more harm than good considering its poor reputation at the minute.
Although this won’t directly affect your business, there may be some in-direct affects. Because Facebook’s reputation has been quite heavily tarnished by all of the scandals involving the platform over the past few years, there is a chance that this negativity will also shadow the Instagram brand. If this is the case, the chances are that the number of Instagram users are likely to slow or decline. On the other hand, Instagram is such a popular platform that it may well improve the reputation of Facebook, and generate more users for both platforms. These are both results that we may not see for another year or so, once enough data has been collected to deduce the level of impact the name changing has made.
There is still an ongoing investigation though, by the Federal Trade Commission. They’re looking into whether Facebook acquired Instagram and WhatsApp “to remove competitive threats and seek dominance in the industry”. Current antitrust laws in the US outlaws “every contract, combination, or conspiracy in restraint of trade” and “monopolisation, attempted monopolisation, or conspiracy or combination to monopolise”. If Facebook is found guilty of purchasing competitor platforms to keep themselves at the top of the social media ladder, then it will mean even bigger trouble for the multi-billion-dollar organisation.
Facebook is still one of the most popular social media sites for a range of audiences, and that isn’t something that’s going to change any time soon, it’s definitely still worthwhile using the platform to target the audience your business is aiming for, and nothing will really change for businesses at the moment in terms of their social media profiles. It will take some time to understand the impact the name change has had on user numbers, and even then, it may not have any visible influence on your business profile itself. If Facebook is in breach of the antitrust laws, whoever takes over the Instagram platform can add or remove certain features (advertising, use of links etc.), but again, it probably won’t come to light for a little while yet, plus by then we’ll have expert advice for you to utilise the changes effectively.
If you want to find out how you can utilise Facebook and Instagram effectively to reach your audience, contact us today and speak to one of our social media marketing experts!
