How to Get Over the Twitter-Instagram War on Photos
So Instagram made sharing its photos a lot more annoying for Twitter users Wednesday morning, which stinks, but isn't likely to change. Because, see, the publicly traded, accountable-to-shareholders Facebook owns Instagram. Ergo, like the social network, the filtered photo-sharing site needs to do things that will make it money, which might sometimes get in the way of the user experience. That's exactly what happened Wednesday morning in what's being called a "brewing rivalry" with Twitter: Instagram wants people on its site, and CEO Kevin Systrom said so. That's not how he sold the move, of course — Systrom thinks seeing pictures on the Instagram app or on those new web pages makes for a better user experience than the littler images in the Twitter stream. The Internet begs to differ, with people like Wired's Mat Honan noting that it's users who lose now. Given that constant, it's might be you that needs to change. We're here to help with a handy three-step program to getting over this terrible ordeal.
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1. Get Angry About It
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In order to avoid harboring horrible feelings about the new situation, which one day leads to an emotional explosion, do as BuzzFeed's Matt Buchanan did and get mad about this whole situation. "Instagram just broke itself," he proclaims, reminding us there is nothing he or you or anyone can do about it. What he means is that the social network just got less social in the name of business. It doesn't work like the social web should, really. So go scream about it, either in a loud room or on Twitter or something. Now's the time to let it all out.
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2. Accept That This Is Reality
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Now that you've gotten that part out of your system, acceptance in the next logical step. Like we said, these social networks will sometimes do things to benefit their bottom lines that directly hurt users. Though Instagram doesn't have the same big-brand-name status as Facebook, it still plays by the same public-company rules, as TechCrunch's Drew Olanoff explains in a sober-minded post. Users need to get used to this kind of thing — not only from Facebook and Instagram but from all these social networks, which ultimately are always going to be companies trying to succeed.
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3. Do Something About It
OK, whiners, if you're going to go ahead and care that much, how about you hack Twitter? For those who don't see that as an option, it's not impossible to share Instagram photos on Twitter even without Twitter Cards, as Bits Blogs Nick Bilton points out. The two-step solution isn't as seamless as it used to be, but it works. Option one involves saving photos to your phone library (under the settings) and tweeting them out from there. Or, post the image on another social network and tweet it from there. It's laborious, but it works. Kind of.
