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Instagram Just Broke Up with Twitter

Things have been complicated between Twitter and Facebook for quite some time now.

While you were sleeping, Instagram ended its two-year-long relationship with Twitter. Everything had been going well. Twitter took Instagram on nice dates and told her she was pretty. Instagram let Twitter play with its good — and by that I mean display Instagram photos on Twitter's website. But then Facebook came swooped in and stole Instagram away. The Twitter-Instagram breakup became official on Wednesday, when Instagram announced that it would no longer allow its photos to show up on Twitter.

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Things are already awkward. Instagram images have started looking kind of janky on Twitter. Instagram explained in a tweet, ironically enough, "This is due to Instagram disabling its Twitter cards integration, and as a result, photos are being displayed using a pre-cards experience." For Instagram, it's about making sure its insane number of users actually use the network they took their pictures with, rather than using Instagram like a filters app for Twitter.

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom confirmed the news at a technology conference in Paris and justified the decision. "We want to direct users to where the content lives originally," he said. "Where do you go to interact with [an Instagram] image? We want that to be instagram.com because that’s a better user experience." Many people suspect that Instagram photos will eventually disappear altogether, though Instagram's stayed mum on its longer term plans.

In practice, the icy new climate between the two companies won't affect you too much. You'll still see links to Instagram in Twitter, but instead of seeing the photo displayed in the expanded version of the tweet, you'll have to click through. No big deal, right? Well, in the context of Silicon Valley corporate politics, the split is huge. Instagram's hasty exit from Twitter's inner circle suggests that the antagonism between the microblogging service and Instagram's new parent company, Facebook, is growing.

This is no big surprise. Things have been complicated between Twitter and Facebook for quite some time now. As Twitter's growth has continued at a steady pace, the company is grabbing an increasingly big slice of Internet users' time and advertisers' dollars. In fact, some analysts say that Twitter will bring in more mobile advertising revenue than Facebook in 2012, which is quite a feat for a network a fraction of the size. This sort of thing is undoubtedly why Facebook bought Instagram, a mobile-only product until recently.

Twitter has also been moving into Instagram's territory lately, though. After Facebook bought Instagram, Twitter  considered buying a photo service of its own, but has since decided to build out the features themselves, starting with photo filters. Twitter is also thinking about ways to better integrate video on its service, perhaps by adding the ability to upload and edit video on its website. By taking on the YouTube behemoth, Twitter may try to make a move even Facebook has been hesitant to do.

It's okay to be sad about the breakup, though. Twitter and Instagram were great together, for a while. But everybody grows and changes and -- in Instagram's case, at least -- gets better, richer friends. It's unfortunate, because–strained metaphors aside–the two really did work nicely together. Now the line has been drawn, and you have to decide: spend more time interacting with other people's pictures on Instagram, or figure out how to use Twitter's filters. It's just unfortune for us that neither seems like a better option than what we had.

Image via Flickr