Fallout predictions on Twitter's breakup with Instagram.

Originally published on Kapuno in the Technology community

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Background:

Instagram’s Twitter card integration, which allowed the easy viewing of the photo on Twitter apps, is no more. Although you can still share to Twitter, Instagram requires users to click through to actually see the images. Their hope is to increase engagement on the, recently upgraded, web presence.

Implications:

First, users will see much less engagement on Twitter for their photos as much less people will see them now. I, for example, am confident I will never click-through unless there’s a ton of RT/Favorites on Twitter to push me.

As people begin to see less engagement on Twitter on their photos which isn’t made up for by the additional engagement on Instagram. Less engagement means less photos posted. Depending on the user, they’ll favor their Instagram or Twitter network growth and we’ll see people choose to focus on one or the other.

The other implication of removing the card is the fact that the card promotes the @Instagram account on Twitter so they should see less growth of that channel.

Going forward, I’m confident that we’ll see Instagram/Facebook take on Twitter in a head-to-head battle for the future of mobile status updates. Instagram is already as big as Twitter when viewing their active user base, and it’s not crazy to think they’d allow users to post content without a picture soon enough.

What impact will it have on you? Will you leave Instagram for an app that keeps a better integration to Twitter?