Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom announced at Le Web last week that Instagram would be dropping support for Twitter cards, and now users are finally seeing the full effect of this competitive move. Instagram photos, which previously appeared cropped in a user’s Twitter stream last week are now totally gone from within Twitter, and you’ll have to head to the web version of Instagram to see all your favorite pics, a Facebook spokeswoman confirmed this afternoon.
The disappearance isn’t a complete surprise: Twitter cards give you the ability to tap and expand a tweet to display content (photos, videos, article previews, etc.), so when Instagram turned off this functionality, it seemed likely that photos would eventually stop appearing in-stream.
Update: Twitter has put up a blog post explaining the removal, citing Instagram’s removal of Twitter cards:
“Instagram has disabled photo integration with Twitter. As a result, photos are no longer appearing in Tweets or user photo galleries. While tweeting links to Instagram photos is still possible, you can no longer view the photos on Twitter, as was previously the case.”
But for many casual users of the two services, this total removal will introduce them to the social battle going on between Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for total control of their photo experience. Instagram recently rolled out web profiles, expanding its presence on desktops and drawing users further onto the Instagram platform and away from sites like Twitter.
AllThingsD reported Saturday that Twitter aims to have its own photo filters ready before the holidays, proving that Twitter too is serious about getting you to filter and share your photos without any help from Instagram at all. The companies obviously realize how important photos are to getting users to share and interact on the web, so it looks like the competition isn’t stopping any time soon.
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