One of the annoying things about Instagram is that it doesn’t support links in captions. This means whenever creators put a link, you’d need to memorize it and type it in yourself. Creators have since had to resort to alternatives, such as putting links in bio, but it’s hardly the most ideal situation.
However, according to the folks at Protocol, they have discovered a patent from Instagram dating back to 2016 which suggested that the company could have been exploring the idea of allowing links in captions, but users would have to pay to include it. The patent suggested that it would cost $2 everytime users choose to activate a link in a caption, but we’re not sure if that’s a placeholder or the actual cost.
That being said, it should be noted that since the patent was filed for back in 2016, there’s a good chance that this might have been an old idea and that Instagram could have moved on from the idea since. However, it does raise an interesting question as to whether or not users would be willing to pay more to access additional features.
Instagram is still largely free to use so obviously the company would love if they could monetize the service further beyond just ads. In fact, even Twitter seems to be thinking about introducing a new subscription feature that would allow users access to certain exclusive features, so why not Instagram, right?
Filed in . Read more about Instagram and Patent. Source: mobilesyrup