Instagram is no longer allowing Twitter users to view its photographs in tweets in an effort to drive more people away from the rival social media company to its own website.
Kevin Systrom, the CEO of the photo-sharing service that was snapped up by Facebook earlier this year, announced today that Instagram has turned off support for 'Twitter cards,' signaling a deepening rift between two of the web's biggest brands.
Twitter users started to complain earlier this week in public messages that Instagram photos were not displaying properly on Twitter's website.
Clarifying the situation today, Mr Systrom released a statement saying: 'We believe the best experience is for us to link back to where the content lives.
Instagram started off as a smartphone application-only service but has recently improved its website.
'A handful of months ago, we supported Twitter cards because we had a minimal web presence,' Mr Systrom said, noting that the company has since released new features that allow users to comment about and 'like' photos directly on Instagram's website.
The rivalry between Facebook and Twitter intensified in April when the former outbid Twitter to nab fast-growing Instagram in a cash-and-stock deal valued at the time at $1 billion.
The acquisition closed in September for roughly $715 million, due to Facebook's recent stock drop.
The companies' ties have been strained since. In July, Twitter blocked Instagram from using its data to help new Instagram users find friends.
Photos are among the most popular features on both Facebook and Twitter, and Instagram's meteoric rise in recent years has further proved how picture-sharing has become a key front in the battle for social media supremacy.
Instagram, which has 100 million users, allows consumers to tweak the photos they take on their smartphones and share the images with their friends, a feature that Twitter has reportedly also begun to develop. Twitter's executive chairman Jack Dorsey was an investor in Instagram and hoped to acquire it before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg tabled a successful bid.
When Mr Zuckerberg announced the acquisition in an April blog post, he said one of Instagram's strengths was its inter-connectivity with other social networks and pledged to continue running it as an independent service.
'We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience,' Mr Zuckerberg wrote. 'We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks.'
A Twitter spokesman declined to comment on Wednesday, but a status message on Twitter's website confirmed that users are 'experiencing issues,' such as 'cropped images' when viewing Instagram photos on Twitter.
Mr Systrom noted that Instagram users will be able to 'continue to be able to share to Twitter as they originally did before the Twitter Cards implementation.'
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