Instagram officially kills Twitter photo integration

The divorce is final. As of today Instagram has officially killed off photo integration with Twitter.

Last week users began noticing that Instagram photos on their Twitter feed were showing up strangely cropped, off-center, or not at all. Now they’ve disappeared from the social network completely.

You’ll still be able to click-through to the Instagram links on Twitter, but there’ll be no way to preview your photos.

Given last weeks events, it’s hardly surprising that Instagram has completely pulled the plug. It’s relationship with Twitter has become increasingly fractious as it cozies up to new owner Facebook.

As Engadget notes, Instagram would probably also rather you looked at photos on its newly revamped web profiles anyway.

Twitter meanwhile is set to launch its own photo-filters, allowing people to post photos from within the social network.

Still, you can’t help but get the feeling that this didn’t have to happen, that Twitter didn’t have to close off its API to all comers. That third-party integration was a great way of finding new services. Shutting them off means that Twitter loses a lot of its usefulness. And while Twitter seems to think it can do just as well on its own, we’re not sure. Remember, the original Twitter app was a third-party client that was bought out.