Twitter users were confused to see that Instagram images appeared cropped in their news feed today. But, the issue will soon be fixed – in that Instagram images will no longer be viewable on Twitter at all.
The issue of cropped Instagram images appearing on the Twitter mobile app was reported earlier today and later confirmed by Twitter as an issue on Instagram’s end.
In a status post headed ‘Instagram photo-rendering issue’, Twitter explained the problem: “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.”
Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom was on stage at LeWeb 12 in Paris today and quickly addressed the decision to drop support for Twitter cards, which provide an expanded content view and allow users to view content such as images in-line with their feeds, instead of having to leave the site or application.
Though Systrom assured users that Instagram will always be integrated with Twitter in order to enable them to tweet out from Instagram, the service will now shift to direct users to the newly launched Instagram website in order to view images.
According to TechCrunch, Systrom confirmed that the cropped images issue will soon be non-existent as the images won’t be viewable on Twitter at all. “This is an evolution of where we want links to our content to go,” stated Systrom.
This decision by the leading photo-sharing service sparked a flurry of comments on the intense rivalry between Facebook, which owns Instagram, and Twitter; the two social networking giants. However, Systrom asserted that his plan is to keep Instagram independent of Facebook for a long time to come.
