Instagram halts Cards support to Twitter

The Instagram versus Twitter tussle has reached new heights with Instagram disabling a feature that’s left their images on Twitter not showing up properly.

More and more users have been noticing that when a tweet containing an Instagram link is opened, either the images are displaying incorrectly or they seem badly cropped.

Twitter put up a status explaining 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 and Facebook’s feud makes your photos look wonky

Instagram Chief Executive Kevin Systrom at the Le Web conference in Paris mentioned that Instagram’s relationship with Twitter is undergoing a change, but the service will remain integrated with Twitter in some form or the other. The main focus behind this move seems to be to push users to view images on Instagram’s own website.

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“Really it’s about where do you go to consume that image, to interact with that image. We want that to be on Instagram,” said Systrom said at the conference. “What we realized over time is we really needed to have an awesome Web presence.”

Instagram had started rolling out Facebook-like profiles on the web in early November. The profiles are mainly modelled over the Facebook timeline, with cover photos and the profile picture feature looking identical. The cover photo though runs recent images almost like a slideshow. Users can heart an image or comment on it -  these web profiles were something Instagram users had been waiting for.

Systrom in a statement said, “We are currently working on building the best experience for Instagram users. A handful of months ago, we supported Twitter Cards because we had a minimal Web presence. We’ve since launched several improvements to our [Web site] that allow users to directly engage with Instagram content through likes, comments, [and] hashtags, and now we believe the best experience is for us to link back to where the content lives. We will continue to evaluate how to improve the experience with Twitter and Instagram photos. As has been the case, Instagram users will continue to be able to share to Twitter as they originally did before the Twitter Cards implementation.”

At the heart of the feud seems to be the acquisition of Instagram by Facebook. The social networking giants had been in talks with Instagram since April and closed the deal in September, purchasing the photo based site for $1 billion. Instagram has been by far, Facebook’s biggest acquisition.

Things had been cold between Instagram and Twitter ever since, with Twitter even cutting off Instagram’s ability to access its API to look up friends. The ‘find your friends’ feature on Instagram had been disabled, leaving people without an option to follow the same people on Instagram that they did on Twitter. Even though users could share images on Twitter, this feature too seems to have run into trouble.

With the Facebook, Instagram and Twitter triangle getting murkier by the day, it’s yet to be seen if Twitter and Instagram will kiss and make up or part ways for good.