Instagram scraps Twitter feed support in favour of Facebook
Photo sharing website Instagram has announced that it will no longer support a feature which allows users to display their pictures in their Twitter feed, a move which restricts such capability to its new owner – Facebook.
Twitter Cards, a feature which formatted images for display on Twitter, was switched off without warning resulting in users images being cropped or misaligned or even not appearing at all.
Instead Twitter users are presented with a text link directing them to the Instagram website.
The move rips up Instagram’s founding philosophy to partner openly with other social networks, exacerbating an increasingly bitter tussle between Twitter and Facebook as it is likely to make the latter a more attractive proposition for advertisiers.
Instagram’s chief executive, Kevin Systrom, claimed that the move wasn’t enforced by Facebook however, saying only that it was a technical decision made to boost Instagram’s own traffic.
Nevertheless photos published on Facebook, Tumblr and Foursquare will not be affected.