Instagram is toying with the idea to charge its users a certain amount of fee if they decide to attach a website link to their photo caption. This is based on a recent patent that was discovered by Mike Murphy, the Transformation Editor over at Protocol.
As shown in the image below, the patent which was originally filed in 2016 depicts a pop-up notification that would appear after a website link is added to the caption inside an Instagram post:
It then asks the user if he or she would like to pay the fee to activate the link. If users choose not to pay, then the link will be posted as a passive non-clickable link which is similar to the existing implementation.
In terms of monetisation, this patent is quite a brilliant solution. However, we are not sure if Instagram users out there would agree to it but then again, not all patents would be turned into actual features or products though.
So, to all Instagram users out there that don’t fancy what they are seeing here, pray hard that this monetisation option would remain as it is: just another entry inside Facebook’s patent depository.
