Tweet This: Instagram Integration Going Bye-Bye

If you’ve noticed that photos sent to Twitter from Instagram don’t quite look right, you’re not alone. In fact, it is by design, according to The New York Times. In a move that “escalates tensions” between the two companies, Instagram has disabled their service's integration with Twitter cards. This feature is used to display images and content within Twitter messages. The social networking site states, “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 CEO Kevin Systrom confirms that the company has removed the ability to send pictures to Twitter, and “plans to completely cut off embedding pictures on the Twitter Web site,” according to The New York Times’ report. Says Systrom:

We’ve decided that right now, what makes sense, is to direct our users to the Instagram Web site. Obviously things change as a company evolves.

Prior to this move, whenever a user published a photo to Instagram and also shared it with their Twitter followers, a click on the “View Photo” link on Twitter’s site would open on the same page. Now, when users click on the same link, they will taken out of Twitter and sent to the Instagram site to view the photo.

Mr. Systrom said that photos posted through other sites and services, including Facebook, Tumblr and Foursquare, will not be affected. For now, Instagram photos appear incorrectly on Twitter, sometimes showing up cropped or off center. It is unclear if Instagram will completely disable the ability for Twitter to show pictures on its Web site.

Instagram, of course, is now part of Facebook. Since the acquisition, which happened earlier this year, Instagram has rolled out Web-centric pages for their 100 million registered users. In doing so, the relationship between Instagram and Twitter has become much more confrontational. When the Facebook acquisition closed, Instagram claimed in a blog post that the deal “means we can now work together to evolve and build a better Instagram for everyone.” As The New York Times rightly concludes: "It looks like “everyone” doesn’t include Twitter." Source: The New York Times

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