Twitter-Instagram At Odds Over Photo Sharing

Early Wednesday morning, Twitter users woke up to find their accounts looking a bit strange.

Twitter accounts look different because Instagram, a free photo-sharing program, disabled the ability for Twitter to properly display Instagram photos on its Web site and in its applications. Now the photos look off-center and cropped in weird places.

Twitter posted a status update to their account saying that Instagram disabled Twitter cards, which are the things used to attach any media to Twitter messages.

Twitter explains:

“Users are experiencing issues with viewing Instagram photos on Twitter. Issues include cropped images. This is due to Instagram disabling its Twitter cards integration, and as a result, photos are being displayed using a pre-cards experience. So, when users click on Tweets with an Instagram link, photos appear cropped.”

It is unclear if this decision by Instagram to remove photos on Twitter will be permanent. For now, users will have a sub-par social media experience.

The move increases tensions between the two companies, which were initially friends when Instagram came on to the tech scene in 2010 when both Twitter and Instagram worked in tandem to garner users away from Facebook. Now, after Facebook’s famous $1 billion purchase of Instagram, the company with over 100 million users seems to be changing direction. The New York Times reports that Instagram began producing its own Web-centric pages for users.

However, Twitter is working on its own photo filter program to compete with Instagram. In a New York Times report, Twitter executives decided the cost to buy a photo sharing and storage site wasn’t cost effective, and so they decided that company could build its own filters instead. Twitter is also looking to add other tools to its mobile applications.