Instagram officially cut off support for Twitter cards on Sunday. Photos taken from Instagram no longer show up on users’ Twitter feeds. Users can, however, access Instagram photos via links on Twitter.
The microblogging community shared the following message regarding the change: “Instagram has disabled photo integration with Twitter. As a result, photos are no longer appearing in tweets or user photo galleries. While tweeting links to Instagram photos is still possible, you can no longer view the photos on Twitter, as was previously the case.”
The cutoff was then later confirmed by a representative for Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), who now owns Instagram. The social media giant purchased the photo sharing application for a crisp $1 billion last summer.
Just last week, Kevin Systrom (chief executive officer for Instagram) spoke at a LeWeb conference, where he mentioned that the relationship between Twitter and Instagram would become more distant. It was also around that time that his company dropped support for Twitter cards, which meant that although images could be seen in a tweet, the pictures were cropped.
Systrom also shared his vision of the newly launched Instagram profiles, “Really it’s about where do you go to consume that image, to interact with that image. We want that to be on Instagram. What we realized over time is we really needed to have an awesome Web presence.”
Twitter won’t go down without a fight. The company plans to launch a revised mobile application with photo filters. The app is set to be tested for a launch at the end of this year.
Instagram and Twitter’s feud will most likely escalate over the next few months. Both social networks want to be top dog and it looks like the battle has just begun. Things should get interesting over the next few months, as each company tries to outdo the other.
