Social war: Facebook’s Instagram disables feature on Twitter

Is Facebook starting a proxy war with Twitter?

It sure seems like it after Instagram, Facebook’s photo-sharing social network, announced it will no longer support a feature that allows its photos to show up on Twitter.

The announcement came after Twitter posted on its status website about “Instagram photo-rendering issues.� The San Francisco-based social network said some users are having problems seeing Instagram photos display correctly. That’s because Instagram stopped using Twitter’s card integration -- which lets some tweets to expand to show additional content such as an Instagram photo.

“Issues include cropped images,� Twitter said, explaining that some users are only seeing parts of an image when they click on a tweet containing a link to an Instagram photo.

The latest issue comes just a few months after Twitter began blocking Instagram from using its software development tool. That move kept Instagram users from importing their Twitter contacts.

The photo issue isn’t affecting all users yet. My photos, for example, seem fine, but Instagram has confirmed that it will no longer user Twitter cards because it wants to direct that traffic to its own website.

“A handful of months ago, we supported Twitter cards because we had a minimal web presence,� said Instagram chief executive Kevin Systrom in a statement provided by a Facebook spokeswoman. “Now we believe the best experience is for us to link back to where the content lives.�

This is unfortunate for Instagram users who enjoy posting their photos on Twitter -- and there are many of them. But at the very least Instagram said users will still be able to tweet out links to their photos.

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