If you’ve suddenly discovered that you can no longer view Instagram pictures within Twitter properly, don’t panic. It’s not just you. It seems that Instagram has turned off Twitter cards integration, which means your Instagram experience on Twitter will be going back to pre-cards integration. Twitter has confirmed the issue in this post, and it seems that the tensions between the two companies are reaching critical mass. Here’s the full text from Twitter’s post:
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.
Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s chief executive has confirmed the removal of the functionality during the LeWeb technology conference. “We’ve decided that right now, what makes sense, is to direct our users to the Instagram Web site,” Mr. Systrom said. “Obviously things change as a company evolves,” he adds. He also says that other services that use Instagram will not be affected.
This was a sudden, but not unexpected, turn of events for both companies. Photo sharing is fast becoming an extremely lucrative market, a market that both companies are looking to capitalize on. Both companies worked closely prior to Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, but relations have turned icy as of late, which might be because of Twitter’s plans to integrate their own filter-effects for their photos, which mirrors closely what Instagram does with its service.