Twitter won't display Instagram Images, gets service blocked

Thursday, December 06, 2012 in Utility

If you’re a social networking junky with a fixation with taking Instagram photos, you might have noticed that those images are not appearing right when posted on Twitter. Photos have been appearing cropped or off center in tweets and we finally know why.
As it would so happen, Instagram has a “card” system in place that allows the app to post images to Twitter. What are Twitter Cards? Well, they’re what allows you to attach media to your tweets which then in turn show up in the tweet itself. Instagram has conveniently altered their backend so that these “cards” are not authorized anymore to pull content from Instagram.

Till now, if you posted a photo on Twitter using the Instagram app, the post would have a “view now” option next to an icon of the image. Clicking on the link would just open up the image which was now on Twitter servers. But with Instagram blocking the Twitter Cards, not only does this thumbnail image not show up right, but click on the link will make you exit the Twitter app/website and redirect you to the Instagram page for that image.

Twitter and Instagram used to be like brothers-in-arms, the only two to offer competition to Facebook’s supremacy. However, that changed with Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and we couldn’t help but wonder whether the merger had something to do with this new issue that’s cropped up. But speaking at LeWeb conference in Paris today, Instagram's CEO Kevin Systrom insists the change has nothing to do with the outfit's acquisition by Facebook and, instead, is framed as a way of promoting its own web service.

Bottomline is, you can still post those over-processed lo-fi shots on other social networking sites just fine, but Twitter might be getting singled out as a service to get only limited accessibility.