Facebook has been trying to capture the image-sharing market in the social networking world and as a result, recently bought Instagram. As a clear indication of the social network war going on between Facebook, Instagram and Twitter; Instagram has stopped allowing its pictures to be displayed in Twitter timelines. Kevin Systrom – co-founder of Instagram, announced in the first week of December that his company will be dropping support for Twitter cards completely in some time. This change means that Instagram photos will not be displayed in Tweets or photo galleries of users.
Tensions between Instagram and Twitter first arose when Twitter stopped allowing Instagram users to find Twitter friends through the former social networking platform. However, Systrom assures that this is not a move to get back at the microblogging platform and neither is it an order from Facebook higher-management – the decision to stop Twitter integration was taken as a result of the new web profile feature that Instagram has launched recently. On a brighter note, images fed to Tumblr and Facebook from this image-sharing service will remain unaffected.
Instagram images are not displayed properly
Although users can post links to images from the image-sharing service on Twitter, viewers must follow the link to view the image. Days after the announcement, Instagram images were being cropped on Twitter so the fact that these images can no longer be seen is not a surprise. It is only natural that Instagram images are now completely absent from Twitter streams.
Twitter cards, which were launched way back in 2011, allow users to add media to the Tweets having links to web content. This allowed users to see videos, photos, etc. on Twitter itself by clicking on and expanding the Tweet. This meant that users did not have to follow the link and leave the microblogging platform to view the full content. Now that Twitter card integration has been stopped, Tweets are back to the pre-card days and users have to follow the link to the web-based image-sharing platform to view the full image.
Twitter retaliates
Just days after the announcement by Systrom, Twitter has come up with a way to allow users to create images like those on Instagram. The much-awaited photo filters feature was launched on 11th December, 2012, which allows users of Android and iOS smartphones to manipulate and edit pictures and upload them on Twitter directly from their phones. Photos edited using this feature now mimics the photo effects that Instagram provides. There are eight filters ranging from Cinematic to Black & White.
This feature was created in collaboration with photo-editing SDK developer – Aviary, and the update has already been released on Google Play and the App Store. A video has been created and posted along with a blog post from Twitter developers to help users learn how to use this filter feature. So what can social media marketers expect next in the social network wars? We can only wait and watch.