"And there's almost always a way to monetize a product that is important to someone."
There's almost always a way to monetize a product that is both important to someone, and difficult to reproduce. If Instagram ever started charging for their service, a newer, "hipper", freer Instagram clone would have popped up overnight and it would have gained a lot of traction just by being free.
Of course, there are other ways to monetize a service other than directly charging a user, but given the nature of what Instagram is, most of the usual suspects (targeting ads and collecting user data, etc) are potentially much creepier than usual.
There's almost always a way to monetize a product that is both important to someone, and difficult to reproduce. If Instagram ever started charging for their service, a newer, "hipper", freer Instagram clone would have popped up overnight and it would have gained a lot of traction just by being free.
Of course, there are other ways to monetize a service other than directly charging a user, but given the nature of what Instagram is, most of the usual suspects (targeting ads and collecting user data, etc) are potentially much creepier than usual.