Instagram is looking to start displaying advertisements in news feed, following the success of its predecessors. Is this the right move for Instagram? After all, it is a picture-sharing media used by personal individuals to designer houses. Who doesn’t get annoyed when ads are obnoxiously displayed?

But in this capital-oriented economy, who are we to complain? Instagram was recently acquired by Facebook, one of the largest advertising media, ergo advertisements would not be a surprise. People have motives. Looking at the state of the economy and fierce competition, profit-maximizing is expected to be the motive of all profit-seeking firms. After all, these companies employ significant amount of people and they actually matter to the economy. Advertisements are actually one of the few ways social media companies can derive revenue from. If they are not making money, for the very least, the local economy will be negatively impacted and it’s not what we want at all.

We complain about ads in Twitter and Facebook but we still use them anyway; we are addicted to them. So, I don’t think the move will harm Instagram. The lack of alternative and how people are psychologically dependent on it give it “inelasticity”. Hence Instagram will get the best of both worlds; receiving large inflow from ads and loyalty from enormous customer base.