That means Instagram images may now appear in Twitter as though they are off-centre or poorly cropped. Previously, thanks to the Twitter cards feature, Instagram photographs would appear perfectly within a user’s Twitter profile.
The falling out between the two companies is latest in a series of squabbles that Twitter has become involved with other internet companies, including LinkedIn, the professional social network and Tumblr, a rival blogging service.
Analysts described the move as a power grab by Instagram, preventing Twitter from gaining more information about the app’s users and stopping Twitter from use the popularity of Instagram photos to fuel the microblogging site’s growth.
Others described it as a pre-emptive move, as it has been reported that Twitter is working on a service like Instagram’s, allowing Twitter users to take snaps on a mobile phone and apply filters to make the photos look professional or stylised.
Mike Isaac from All Things Digital, the technology news site, said: “In effect, it’s Instagram giving Twitter the middle finger, a clear sign of the photo-sharing service making plain that it no longer wants Twitter to ride on the successful coat-tails of the millions of photos Instagram hosts on its service every single day.”
Speaking at the LeWeb conference in Paris this week, Kevin Systrom, Instagram chief executive, argued that the move was due to technical considerations rather than a business decision. “This isn’t actually a consequence of us getting acquired,” he said.
Instagram added: “We will continue to evaluate how to improve the experience with Twitter and Instagram photos.”
Twitter said: “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.”
In recent times, Twitter has blocked the likes of LinkedIn and Tumblr from accessing its API — a way for other companies and services to access Twitter’s data and integrate with the company’s system.
In an interview with The Times last month, Twitter’s chief executive Dick Costolo, denied that restrictions to its API were designed to prevent the growth of other rivals or to ensure that Twitter maintained had full control of its own data for advertising purposes.
“It has everything to do with removing friction from the user experience of doing things, like moving from one platform to another and being able to innovate on the [Twitter] service without having to worry so much [about how other companies were using Twitter’s API],” he said.
