Twitter was once an open platform for people to express their views and a place where freedom of speech found a voice. Now however, the company is looking to monetize and control the way content is displayed on the site and this has led to content providers backing out of deals with the social networking giant.
The news that is now doing the rounds in regards to Twitter is that Instagram has pulled the plug on the social networking site’s ‘expanded tweets’ feature as of December 5, 2012, according to a status post by Twitter.
This latest development will mean that photographs from Instagram will not be showing up in Twitter. What started out as ‘expanded tweets’ on the site has now turned into ‘Twitter Cards’, which allows media content to be displayed on Twitter in an effective manner. However, there has been some debate among content providers as to whether Twitter is actually riding on the back of their services and taking business away from them.
Instagram’s Chief Executive Officer Kevin Systrom is of the opinion that his company is evolving with its own identity and that they are trying to do the best that they can for their business. This comes in light of the fact that the photo-portal was recently acquired by another social networking heavyweight Facebook. However, all said and done, it appears that content providers are wising up to social networking sites and will need to be extra-cautious as to who is a friend and foe in this rising online debate.
