Twitter Moves To Curb Instagram Links

Hammeh writes According to a report on Mashable, Twitter have sent out messages to some of their high profile users prompting them to share images using Twitter's own service rather than Instagram links. The news comes 2 years since Instagram pulled support for Twitter cards and has been part of the continuing battle between the two social networks. With Instagram now having overtaken Twitter in terms of users, this may be a move to try and use high profile users to show off Twitter's own image and content tools.

Comments

Social Networking is a mess

[Iamthecheese]

Social networking sites have forgotten the reason they exist, and the reason people use them. People don't go to a social networking site to be monetized, they tolerate being monetized so long as the social network provides sufficient value.

It's a similar situation to the early days of searching. People didn't go to early Yahoo.com to get the things Yahoo wanted to push, people went to search the internet and tolerated having things pushed at them as long as the search was good enough. But as soon as Google offered a good search with minimal advertising the market spoke very loudly about that kind of thing. I feel like there's a pent-up demand in social networking for low friction, low-bullshit connecting of people. The first social network that offers a superior product and doesn't stand in peoples' way will make a killing.

Re:Social Networking is a mess

[Iamthecheese]

How?

When old Yahoo made money from its search engine it did so by pushing paid sites as search results, cluttering up the interface with advertisements, and otherwise being intrusive and unpleasant. And it lacked the self-awareness to change this behavior. Rather than saying, "How can we make things better for the user?" they said, "How can we make more money from the user?" So while better search results was on their radar an interface like Google's just never came up as a possibility. That's why they were blown completely out of the water. Google made money as a search provider without using Yahoo-esque tactics by being the first to do what present social networks are doing (analytics) but more importantly by being a place users wanted to go. Twitter is already doing this successfully. Look at their interface: light, efficient, smooth, and fast. And they're very successful. By limiting user actions now they're eating the seed corn. The'll make more money in the short term but in the long term they're pushing users to less limited places.

But I digress. By "social networking" I meant Facebook-esque networking. Attempts to allow comprehensive social collectives to happen. Facebook has fallen far down the monetization rabbit hole in the same way old Yahoo did. The way Facebook thinks is of where to put ads, how to better manipulate users into sub-optimal decisions (such as mis-click capture), how to make games that will best entangle users ... Rather than saying, "How can we make things better for the user?" they say, "How can we make more money from the user?" The money is in having many users and in letting them do what they do, with a completely unobtrusive, subtle advertising network offering things they like and want. When a social network focuses to a massive extent on making the user experience as excellent as possible even if that's less immediately profitable they'll get more than enough market share to make up the difference.

the problem with Twitter

[slashmydots]

140 characters ISN'T ENOUGH! That's not enough to say anything of substance. 300 characters is sufficient and almost as quick to read. If there was a service that came out with 300 characters as a limit, it would crush Twitter. They should get it through their thick heads that superior services will demolish their business if they don't listen to the number one complaint about Twitter from their users!

Re:Disintegration of the ecosystem

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

In this case, it's actually rather impressive how badly the twits appear to have forgotten.

"Hey, let's select a group of our most influential users and then annoy them with an unexpected and minimally useful nag screen when they try to use our service!" is a plan that sounds like a joke, not a strategy; but apparently twitter is now doing exactly that. Are they really gambling that all those users are just morons who are too stupid to realize that twitter has a given set of features; but would totally love to embrace them over a competitor they already use if only they are nagged enough? That seems...a trifle optimistic.