Twitter blocks Instagram from “find friends” feature through API

Instagram may have grown to have more than 80 million users, but it doesn’t mean the company is immune from Twitter’s API scorn.

Users who download the new update to Instagram today will find that they can no longer find fellow Twitter users on the service, an interesting development as Twitter continues to work through its relationship with developers and the level of access it provides to its API.

In a comment to The Next Web, a Twitter spokesperson said, “We understand that there’s great value associated with Twitter’s follow graph data, and we can confirm that it is no longer available within Instagram,” which seems to imply that Twitter would prefer to be paid for the value of the social graph it provides.

In June, Twitter blocked users from cross-posting their Tweets to LinkedIn, and warned developers that the company would increasingly work to keep Twitter users on Twitter. It seems odd to block Instagram users from finding friends through Twitter, since the function didn’t affect how a user experienced Twitter’s product, but fits with the general concern over basing products on another service’s API.



GigaOM