No API For You: Twitter Shuts Off “Find Friends” Feature For Instagram | TechCrunch

This is basic stuff.

Instagram has just announced 80 million users and a new app update; Noticeably missing in the update? The “Find Your Friends” on Twitter feature, which allowed users to follow the same people they follow on Twitter on Instagram.

Of course this has been closed off by Twitter. Twitter is not an open platform, and this is the kind of feature that Twitter wants you to use Twitter (and its own apps) to do.

The “Tweet Photo” feature is still available.

Of course it's still available, because pushing data into Twitter ads value to Twitter.

Why Facebook Needs Two Photo Apps

Dan Frommer:

Bigger picture, Facebook didn’t buy Instagram because Mark Zuckerberg thought it was the perfect mobile photo app or the only one that Facebook needed. Facebook bought Instagram because it’s doing something new and different that’s special; because it represented the biggest existing threat to Facebook; and because it’s building an interesting new social network focused around photography. And Facebook wanted to own it.

This Is Why Instagram was Worth $1 Billion

A nice piece from Christina Warren at Mashable:

The app — which was in development before the social network made its offer to buy Instagram about six weeks ago — gives us a glimpse at how Facebook was planning to compete against the young mobile-first startup.

Here is why Facebook bought Instagram

Om Malik:

My translation: Facebook was scared shitless and knew that for first time in its life it arguably had a competitor that could not only eat its lunch, but also destroy its future prospects. Why? Because Facebook is essentially about photos, and Instagram had found and attacked Facebook’s achilles heel — mobile photo sharing.