
Twitter Loses Ability to Properly Display Instagram Photos - lleims
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/twitter-loses-ability-to-properly-display-instagram-photos/
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danielpal
This is likely going to hurt Instagram more than Twitter, but Instagram can
now afford it.

Though some part of me can't help but to feel somewhat glad. Twitter has been
treating developers like crap for the past year; is somewhat comforting to see
them getting a taste of that.

~~~
twoodfin
Does Twitter care that much? Presumably in the not-too-distant future they'll
be rolling out an enhanced camera/photo tool in their client, precious filters
and all.

If it's decent, I suspect it'll replace Instagram for many Twitter users.
Especially if Instagram still doesn't allow their pictures to show up in the
card view.

~~~
dannyr
Instagram is not about the filters. It's about the community of people sharing
photos.

Unless Twitter creates a section/site dedicated to just photos, it will not be
a threat to Instagram.

~~~
cube13
Are they sharing their photos on Instagram itself, or were they just using the
social network integration features? I would wager that the majority of users
of Instagram don't really care about the Instagram social network, instead
using the application to share photos through Facebook and Twitter.

Instagram's FAQ actually puts their social network integration as a major
feature of the app, even mentioning Twitter as one of the compatible networks.

~~~
untog
_I would wager that the majority of users of Instagram don't really care about
the Instagram social network_

...and I would absolutely take that bet. I know a ton of (less tech-y) people
that check Instagram like it's a bad addiction. It's become a less involved
Facebook- checking that results in a huge cognitive load, Instagram is just a
nice stream of photos for you to browse through.

I get far more 'native' comments on my Instagram photos than I do through the
integrated Facebook post. I suspect I am not alone.

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arcatek
It's funny because the cards documentation is still using Instagram as
example. :)

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zaidf
Extremely short-sighted move on Facebook's part. This is a move meant as
retaliation to Twitter's API insanity but really, all it does is makes you
look as evil as twitter in the eyes of the users. The only problem is that
twitter itself has a much lower bar it holds itself to than facebook. And when
facebook stoops to twitter's level, it has much much more to lose than
twitter.

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debacle
Man, what posturing we're going to see in the coming months between Twitter
and Facebook.

In 12 months we'll all be back on MySpace.

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davidu
Companies fight, users lose. Same story, different day.

~~~
freejack
Companies compete, users win.

The press nearly always gets this wrong and the viewpoint has taken root in
our collective thinking.

Competition is about customers, not competitors. With competition, customers
should get better stuff, more stuff and cheaper stuff.

I've seen very little "users losing" in the past 10 years, despite continuous
reporting to the contrary. Were this not the case, we wouldn't even have a
twitter, facebook or instagram - we'd all be using the same thing provided by
the same company and it would most definitely be outmoded and suck.

Competition works. Get used to it, change sucks.

~~~
j_s
> Competition is about customers, not competitors.

Who are FaceBook's and Twitter's customers? Certainly not the users. So it's
still possible that users lose.

~~~
ketralnis
No, but what they're competing for is audience size. And their audience _is_
their users.

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nakedrobot2
THIS is in the New York Times (blog) and creating such a storm in a teacup? I
think part of me died inside. Are any of the great minds in the world really
worried about this?

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lutusp
So let me get this straight -- people are allowing their photos to be encoded
with a proprietary encoding, even though any number of free, open-source
encodings are readily available?

Follow-up question: Why?

After the noise dies down, I hope this issue will be seen as another argument
against proprietary graphic encodings and software patents in general.

~~~
micampe
what proprietary encoding? Instagram photos are JPEG, they disabled embedding
them through HTTP.

