If you are an influencer, prepare yourself. Instagram seems to be considering or considering at the time the possibility of charging for the simple fact of allowing an active link to be added next to the caption of the publications. Something that could seem like a real madness and shot in the foot, or not.
Instagram may charge for adding links
Mike Murphy has discovered an interesting, fascinating, striking or whatever you want to call it, even absurd, new Instagram patent . It describes how the popular social platform Instagram asks the user through a pop-up window if the link they just added wants or not to be active. That is, you can click and on it to redirect you to the URL it points to.
As you will know if you make use of the popular social network, links are not something that works on Instagram as on other platforms. For example, when you add a link to your posts on Twitter, users who read them can interact with them to take them to the website, another tweet within the network, or even to an Instagram post. However, in the other large social network that Facebook has, this is not the case.
On Instagram, links are one of the big complaints that many users make to the platform. First of all, because in order to be able to place them in publications such as stories (something that significantly improves the usefulness of stories) you have to meet certain requirements that not all of them can easily achieve. And secondly, because in other parts, such as the feed posts themselves , the links appear but are not active.
That means that if you want to go where it points, you will have to copy and paste into your usual browser. Hence, many users turn to third-party services that through the links in the biography, the only place where they work for everyone, make use of a URL that they place manually and change over the days or self-generating through third-party services.
With this patent, which must be said that it was filed a long time ago and was granted on September 8, 2020, the network would give the option of activating the URL through a previous payment of 2 dollars . Much, little, crazy? Well, the truth is that everything will depend on the user profile. A brand or influencer with good engagement could find it more than correct if they win that option, although it is not the case for the rest.
However, this is not just more than a patent and like many others it may not even be carried out. Companies are constantly patenting ideas in order not to miss possible future opportunities if they decide to do something similar.
Although paying to add a link we believe that it is something that few or no one would do on a regular basis and for anything, the truth is that if we look at recent movements related to the sale of products within Instagram, it may in certain cases make sense to offer something like that. As a kind of additional option when promoting a publication for certain profiles and with specific privileges.
At the end of the day, if Instagram “lets” you go from their network, it is normal that they want to make a profit. And what better than the economic one, which is ultimately what all the networks and services that in themselves are used without paying anything look for.
