Twitter has taken the unusual step of interrupting high-profile users within its own app, to suggest they stop posting photos from Instagram to the social network.
A number of Twitter’s ‘verified’ users – accounts held by celebrities, brands and other public figures, including journalists – received the in-app alert, which reminded them to “post your photos directly on Twitter to make sure your fans always see them”.
It was accompanied by two screenshots from a spoof “Superstar” account: one accompanied by a text link to an Instagram photo, and the other with a photo posted directly to Twitter, which thus appears within the tweet itself.
Instagram photos haven’t been displayed within tweets since December 2012, when the company switched off its integration with Twitter’s “cards” system, in an attempt to drive more traffic to the Instagram website.
Why is Twitter trying to stop its verified users from sharing Instagram links in 2015? The move could be seen as defensiveness on Twitter’s part: when Instagram announced that it had more than 300 million active users in December 2014, most reports chose to compare that figure to Twitter’s most recent milestone of 284 million.
However, nudging high-profile users to posting photos directly on Twitter is part of the company’s wider drive to get more multimedia on its network.
For example, in December 2012 it added photo filters to its app, then in March 2014 it added the ability to tag other Twitter users in photos and post up to four images in a single tweet.
Twitter is also preparing to add “native video” features in the coming months for users to post videos directly from its app – features that will sit alongside its standalone video-sharing app Vine.
While some reports have suggested the new warning is for “mega-users” only, it appears to be going out to a wider sample of verified users. I got it, and although I’m verified, with 16k followers I’m hardly high-profile.
It remains to be seen how many verified users will heed Twitter’s reminder to post photos directly rather than through Instagram. When Kim Kardashian tweeted her now-infamous “#breaktheinternet” photo in November 2014, for example, it was a link to an Instagram image rather than a direct photo.
