Instagram stops photos from being embedded on Twitter

Images now appear cropped, will eventually be pulled altogether with only a link to Instagram site

If you went on Twitter today, and noticed something weird going on with your Instagram pictures, you are not alone. Twitter and Instagram, once allies but now competitors, have begun to go to war with each other over photo sharing dominance.

,Instagram has removed the ability for pictures to be integrated into Twitter Cards, meaning that the pictures will no longer fit in the allotted window, and will appear cropped, Twitter said on its blog Wednesday.

Twitter Cards allow users to attach "cards" to their tweets that will display content such as headlines, photos, and articles from around the web.

Here is what Twitter had to say about the issue:

“Users are experiencing issues with viewing Instagram photos on Twitter. Issues include cropped images. This is due to Instagram disabling its Twitter cards integration, and as a result, photos are being displayed using a pre-cards experience. So, when users click on Tweets with an Instagram link, photos appear cropped.”

Instagram founder and CEO Kevin Systrom, for his part, attempted to explain the move at LeWeb 12 on Wednesday, TechCrunch is reporting.

Saying of the move to disable Twitter Cards, “this is an evolution of where we want links to our content to go,” he noted that, since being bought by Facebook, the competition between social networks to dominate photo sharing have heated up, forcing Instagram to make a decision on where it wanted to go.

When mentioning the war between social networks over photo sharing, Systrom  seems to be making a veiled reference to Twitter deciding last month it was going to launch filters on its camera app in the next few months, essentially ripping off Instagram’s idea.

On top of Twitter attempting to become a direct competitor, Instagram has also recently begun building up a web presence, announcing in November that it would be creating Web profiles for each one of its users, as well as Instagram badges the profiles.

Obviously, Instagram would rather that users view pictures on its own website rather than Twitter, and that seems to be where all of this is heading. Photos will not remain cropped on Twitter forever; in fact, Systrom said, they eventually will not show up in tweets at all, and instead will link back to Instagram.com.

“We’re working on building an awesome web presence, which we just launched,” said Systrom. “We revamped our web properties, and now we’re able to staff up teams to work on web properties with the Facebook acquisition.”

I have to point out a little bit of irony here: in June, Twitter pulled a similar move against LinkedIn, no longer allowing Twitter posts to appear on LinkedIn profiles because it did not want other parties, such as LinkedIn copying their content. Now, it seems, Twitter has gotten a taste of its own medicine.

Instagram could not be reached for comment.

(Image source: https://www.marketingextreme.nl)