Following up on his comments at LeWeb on Wednesday morning, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom provided the following statement further explaining Instagram’s abrupt decision to this week pull support for integrating with Twitter Cards, Twitter’s expanded information feature, which has resulted in Instagram photos that are shared to Twitter not being properly displayed. As Systrom’s statement reads in full:
We are currently working on building the best experience for Instagram users. A handful of months ago, we supported Twitter cards because we had a minimal web presence. We’ve since launched several improvements to our website that allow users to directly engage with Instagram content through likes, comments, hashtags and now we believe the best experience is for us to link back to where the content lives. We will continue to evaluate how to improve the experience with Twitter and Instagram photos. As has been the case, Instagram users will continue to be able to share to Twitter as they originally did before the Twitter Cards implementation.
The “several improvements” to Instagram’s website that Systrom mentions include the decision in late October to roll out full Web profiles for Instagram users. Previously, users could only interact with full Instagram profiles on their smartphones and mobile devices.
