Users of both Instagram and Twitter are civilians caught in the middle of a digital battle today. Photo sharing site Instagram is blocking its photos from appearing on Twitter. That means only a link will appear when you try to post a picture from Instagram and send it to microblogging site Twitter. To see an Instagram image, users will have to leave Twitter and go to Instagram's site in order to access it.
The move comes after Twitter stopped allowing Instagram users to find friends through Twitter data, which followed Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram. BuzzFeed.com Tech Editor Matt Buchanan calls this “the social media cold war”. He comes to "Early Start" with more on the battle.
Instagram, which is growing rapidly and recently passed 100 million users, is “less dependent on Twitter than they might have been in the beginning,” Buchanan says. “And they also have Facebook’s might behind them,” which has 1 billion users. “They’re definitely going to be able to survive.”
Twitter has more at stake now that it has evolved “more into a media rich stream,” he says. “Losing Instagram definitely hurts Twitter here.”