7 ms·

Kevin Systrom On Pulling Twitter Cards Integration

46 points by ssclafani 14y ago

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
porterhaney 14y ago
It's funny. Without Twitter and Facebook to distribute Instagram's content they would have never been able to grow to such a size so quickly. Now that they've reached this large critical mass of users they can afford to go back and pull their content from the networks that made it popular in the first place.
- colkassad 14y ago
  One of the networks you mention owns them now. And it can be argued that Twitter is guilty of the same thing, in light of their treatment of third party developers. Perhaps you were being sarcastic though.
elomarns 14y ago
I understand why they're doing this. They need to control the medium where people consume their content, so they'll be able to sell some ads. By the way, Twitter are doing the same. Unfortunately this is one of the few options most social networks companies see to become profitable. But it's kind of sad that almost nobody is trying to be profitable providing convenience and a smooth experience to their users.
- manaskarekar 14y ago
  Wasn't that the whole point of app.net?
  - elomarns 14y ago
    Exactly! That's why I think App.net. is great! It's hard to have a consumer product with subscriptions as business model, but I think worth the try. This way you treat the people who make you pay the bills with the respect they deserve.
    - jmathai 14y ago
      See @graue's post above :)
      - elomarns 14y ago
        I agree with @graue, descentralized services are better for their users. At least on theory. But I don't have any problem in using a good service provided by a company. Many things I can't live without were created by a company aiming to gain some money. The main point to me is focus on please your customers. So if a company do this, it will have my money.
        jmathai 14y ago
        ++ The issues I have with App.net is that their claims of "we won't screw the user" don't really have any legs to stand on. No company starts out wanting to screw users. But when it comes to turning a profit sometimes you have to put users second. There's nothing built into App.net's model that would prevent that. Federation bakes that into the model from the beginning. So they're making core claims that aren't built into their core model. I'm happy to pay for online services like App.net but I wish their messaging would have more sustenance.
  - graue 14y ago
    App.net isn't a solution. They are still a centralized social network, owned by one company. Sure, they treat users nice now, but what happens if the business model changes? Second, it's impossible to get on App.net's social network without paying a significant sum of money. This means a truly diverse set of voices will never be represented on App.net. For more, see “You Can't Start the Revolution From the Country Club” by Anil Dash: http://dashes.com/anil/2012/08/you-cant-start-the-revolution-from-the-country-club.html http://dashes.com/anil/2012/08/you-cant-start-the-revolution... I have the most hope, long term, for the Tent protocol: https://tent.io https://tent.io It's not ready for prime-time yet, and the existing hosting service is not entirely smooth. But anyone can set up their own provider. We could have some businesses that charge a few dollars a month, like App.net, and put users first, and other businesses that offer free service with ads, and it would all be on the same network, just like the competition among email and web hosting providers today.
    - riffic 14y ago
      Ostatus is a protocol that exists today, already proven with software (Status.net) and a community (Identi.ca)
      - graue 14y ago
        Tent is at least equally proven. I'm following 157 people (maybe ~50 are consistently active users). Within only a few months of existence, Tent has attracted development of an Android app[1], two iOS apps in beta[2], a very smooth and sleek OS X app[3], and several alternative webapps[4], all made by third-party developers with no relation to the startup that created the Tent protocol. I don't mean to be rude or dismissive towards another open-social project, but I have been unimpressed with the design and usability of Identi.ca. OStatus seems to be the work of idealistic folks who hoped they could just make an open protocol and people would flock to it, solely because it was open. Predictably, that hasn't happened. Open is great, but software also needs to provide a great user experience. I think the Tent community gets this. Tent is also more than a Twitter clone. It already supports private posts, long-form blogging and social bookmarking, unlike OStatus, and in the months ahead it will do much more. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.monstarlab.tentmonstar https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.monstarlab... [2] http://signup.tentrapp.com/ http://signup.tentrapp.com/ and http://bivy.me/ http://bivy.me/ [3] http://jabs.nu/Tentia/ http://jabs.nu/Tentia/ [4] http://zelten.cc/ http://zelten.cc/, http://essayist.mndj.me/ http://essayist.mndj.me/
sami36 14y ago
There is no longer such a thing as "Instagram," they belong to Facebook now. It's normal they try to distance themselves from Twitter, a competitor. Also, to be fair, Twitter hasn't exactly been an example of openness lately, the way they're screwing the developers who've made them what they've become is an even more egregious example of platform lock-in.
SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
Every site wants to be the aggregator, no-one wants to be aggregated. This is what we can't have good things.
- coloneltcb 14y ago
  Totally agree with Sideburns. Although, when companies/services stop thinking about what's good for the user, they become ripe for disruption.
- raganwald 14y ago
  Every site wants to be the aggregator, no-one wants to be aggregated. Or as Spolsky put it: "Smart companies try to commoditize their products' complements." http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html
lutusp 14y ago
So let me get this straight -- people are allowing their photos to be encoded with a proprietary encoding, even though any number of free, open-source encodings are readily available? Follow-up question: Why? After the noise dies down, I hope this issue will be seen as another argument against proprietary graphic encodings and software patents in general.
acangiano 14y ago
I always found Instagram's website bizarre. Unless you own an iPhone or an Android device you can't register with the website, see what others are posting (even if they are making the photos public), or have a sneak preview of what Instagram is all about.
- joeblau 14y ago
  Yeah, that's true. The good thing is that their API has let other companies fill that void. Although with that being said, I think Instagram is changing it's focus with recent additions like the Facebook-like profile pages.
- jcomis 14y ago
  not to mention the css alone for an instagram profile page weighs in at 400k. edit: well, it was 400k when they launched a few weeks ago, its about 250k now... still huge
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
MatthewPhillips 14y ago
> “this is an evolution of where we want links to our content to go.” Strange that he describes photos posted by users as "our content".
- raganwald 14y ago
  If you aren't in the business, you ARE the business. You are their product, your photos are their content.
- jmathai 14y ago
  It's oddly sounding very much like Twitter has been lately. I don't blame sites for trying to monetize but this is kinda sorta a bait and switch. Use our products for "free" and build services on top of them for "free" until we're big enough.
jasonkolb 14y ago
Now that these consumer-facing companies are being pressured to monetize, the fuzzy warm days of everyone sharing everything are over. Now we get to see who's really holding the good cards and who's been getting by on bluffing. For my money I think Twitter is more dependent on third parties than third parties are on Twitter. Not just Instagram, but the entire ecosystem of apps that grew up around Twitter in the bygone days of warm fuzzies. Twitter seems like someone throwing a great party who slowly throws out everyone interesting because they want to be the center of attention. Once all the interesting people are gone though, the partiers are trickling out, and the interesting people who made the party hot have moved on.
- danso 14y ago
  > For my money I think Twitter is more dependent on third parties than third parties are on Twitter. Not just Instagram, but the entire ecosystem of apps that grew up around Twitter in the bygone days of warm fuzzies. Really? I mean, in the current scenario? The first-party Twitter apps on mobile devices are pretty strong, enough that I don't even use TweetBot even though I paid for it. And while Instagram was nice, I don't think I used Twitter to view Instagram...in fact, I'm pretty happy with Twitter just being used to share links, with which I click through. The value of Twitter is that its network effect is such that "everyone" (at least most people in media and tech) are on it. They may have gotten on their through third-party apps, but now Twitter has done an adequate job on their own apps and it'll be awhile before the Twitter network will ever migrate to some other place (and where to, Google+?)
  - ricardobeat 14y ago
    The iOS app is nice, but I don't use it nearly as much as the "official" desktop app (which has been completely abandoned). Gone are the days when people would respond in real-time, now everybody is drowned in a huge feed.
    - drp4929 14y ago
      If you don't want to get drowned by your feed then you want to keep an eye on http://signups.simplrinc.com http://signups.simplrinc.com
ricardobeat 14y ago
They will die together, separated.
guiambros 14y ago
It's hard to feel any sympathy for Twitter on this Instagram debacle, given their track record. Of course, users will pay the price, with a poor user experience and some additional clicks (plus ads, FB cookies, etc). Pity. That's the problem with being user instead of customer. Nice and free, exactly because we are the product. I see a Chrome extension coming in 3...2..
psychotik 14y ago
So what are they doing, technically, that makes it hard for the twitter app to display an image inline? That URL just points to an image, so I'm not sure what broke here.
- jmathai 14y ago
  Twitter has an existing standard that allows them to easily discover what image to embed. It's called Twitter Cards and Instagram had the markup for it but apparently removed it. It's unfortunate because any site can use Twitter Cards to have their content displayed well in Tweets. So in my mind it's the right approach for a network as large as Twitter. Facebook has similar tags. https://dev.twitter.com/docs/cards https://dev.twitter.com/docs/cards
  - psychotik 14y ago
    Thanks. Most media sites have Open Graph tags - I wonder why Twitter didn't just reuse those. I understand they're from a competitor but they are somewhat standard. All these proprietary tags add unnecessary overhead to developers and bloat to pages. Sigh!
    - jmathai 14y ago
      Agreed. That wouldn't have stopped Instagram from removing support though.
    - natrius 14y ago
      Twitter does reuse Open Graph tags. https://dev.twitter.com/docs/cards#open-graph https://dev.twitter.com/docs/cards#open-graph
caycep 14y ago
back to IRC we go...
clark-kent 14y ago
How about making instagram.com awesome so that it's a better experience than twitter?

46 points by ssclafani 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

It's funny. Without Twitter and Facebook to distribute Instagram's content they would have never been able to grow to such a size so quickly. Now that they've reached this large critical mass of users they can afford to go back and pull their content from the networks that made it popular in the first place.

colkassad 14y ago
One of the networks you mention owns them now. And it can be argued that Twitter is guilty of the same thing, in light of their treatment of third party developers. Perhaps you were being sarcastic though.

elomarns 14y ago

I understand why they're doing this. They need to control the medium where people consume their content, so they'll be able to sell some ads. By the way, Twitter are doing the same. Unfortunately this is one of the few options most social networks companies see to become profitable. But it's kind of sad that almost nobody is trying to be profitable providing convenience and a smooth experience to their users.

manaskarekar 14y ago
Wasn't that the whole point of app.net?
- elomarns 14y ago
  Exactly! That's why I think App.net. is great! It's hard to have a consumer product with subscriptions as business model, but I think worth the try. This way you treat the people who make you pay the bills with the respect they deserve.
  - jmathai 14y ago
    See @graue's post above :)
    - elomarns 14y ago
      I agree with @graue, descentralized services are better for their users. At least on theory. But I don't have any problem in using a good service provided by a company. Many things I can't live without were created by a company aiming to gain some money. The main point to me is focus on please your customers. So if a company do this, it will have my money.
      - jmathai 14y ago
        ++ The issues I have with App.net is that their claims of "we won't screw the user" don't really have any legs to stand on. No company starts out wanting to screw users. But when it comes to turning a profit sometimes you have to put users second. There's nothing built into App.net's model that would prevent that. Federation bakes that into the model from the beginning. So they're making core claims that aren't built into their core model. I'm happy to pay for online services like App.net but I wish their messaging would have more sustenance.
- graue 14y ago
  App.net isn't a solution. They are still a centralized social network, owned by one company. Sure, they treat users nice now, but what happens if the business model changes? Second, it's impossible to get on App.net's social network without paying a significant sum of money. This means a truly diverse set of voices will never be represented on App.net. For more, see “You Can't Start the Revolution From the Country Club” by Anil Dash: http://dashes.com/anil/2012/08/you-cant-start-the-revolution-from-the-country-club.html http://dashes.com/anil/2012/08/you-cant-start-the-revolution... I have the most hope, long term, for the Tent protocol: https://tent.io https://tent.io It's not ready for prime-time yet, and the existing hosting service is not entirely smooth. But anyone can set up their own provider. We could have some businesses that charge a few dollars a month, like App.net, and put users first, and other businesses that offer free service with ads, and it would all be on the same network, just like the competition among email and web hosting providers today.
  - riffic 14y ago
    Ostatus is a protocol that exists today, already proven with software (Status.net) and a community (Identi.ca)
    - graue 14y ago
      Tent is at least equally proven. I'm following 157 people (maybe ~50 are consistently active users). Within only a few months of existence, Tent has attracted development of an Android app[1], two iOS apps in beta[2], a very smooth and sleek OS X app[3], and several alternative webapps[4], all made by third-party developers with no relation to the startup that created the Tent protocol. I don't mean to be rude or dismissive towards another open-social project, but I have been unimpressed with the design and usability of Identi.ca. OStatus seems to be the work of idealistic folks who hoped they could just make an open protocol and people would flock to it, solely because it was open. Predictably, that hasn't happened. Open is great, but software also needs to provide a great user experience. I think the Tent community gets this. Tent is also more than a Twitter clone. It already supports private posts, long-form blogging and social bookmarking, unlike OStatus, and in the months ahead it will do much more. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.monstarlab.tentmonstar https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.monstarlab... [2] http://signup.tentrapp.com/ http://signup.tentrapp.com/ and http://bivy.me/ http://bivy.me/ [3] http://jabs.nu/Tentia/ http://jabs.nu/Tentia/ [4] http://zelten.cc/ http://zelten.cc/, http://essayist.mndj.me/ http://essayist.mndj.me/

sami36 14y ago

There is no longer such a thing as "Instagram," they belong to Facebook now. It's normal they try to distance themselves from Twitter, a competitor. Also, to be fair, Twitter hasn't exactly been an example of openness lately, the way they're screwing the developers who've made them what they've become is an even more egregious example of platform lock-in.

SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago

Every site wants to be the aggregator, no-one wants to be aggregated. This is what we can't have good things.

coloneltcb 14y ago
Totally agree with Sideburns. Although, when companies/services stop thinking about what's good for the user, they become ripe for disruption.
raganwald 14y ago
Every site wants to be the aggregator, no-one wants to be aggregated. Or as Spolsky put it: "Smart companies try to commoditize their products' complements." http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html

lutusp 14y ago

So let me get this straight -- people are allowing their photos to be encoded with a proprietary encoding, even though any number of free, open-source encodings are readily available? Follow-up question: Why? After the noise dies down, I hope this issue will be seen as another argument against proprietary graphic encodings and software patents in general.

acangiano 14y ago

I always found Instagram's website bizarre. Unless you own an iPhone or an Android device you can't register with the website, see what others are posting (even if they are making the photos public), or have a sneak preview of what Instagram is all about.

joeblau 14y ago
Yeah, that's true. The good thing is that their API has let other companies fill that void. Although with that being said, I think Instagram is changing it's focus with recent additions like the Facebook-like profile pages.
jcomis 14y ago
not to mention the css alone for an instagram profile page weighs in at 400k. edit: well, it was 400k when they launched a few weeks ago, its about 250k now... still huge

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

MatthewPhillips 14y ago

> “this is an evolution of where we want links to our content to go.” Strange that he describes photos posted by users as "our content".

raganwald 14y ago
If you aren't in the business, you ARE the business. You are their product, your photos are their content.
jmathai 14y ago
It's oddly sounding very much like Twitter has been lately. I don't blame sites for trying to monetize but this is kinda sorta a bait and switch. Use our products for "free" and build services on top of them for "free" until we're big enough.

jasonkolb 14y ago

Now that these consumer-facing companies are being pressured to monetize, the fuzzy warm days of everyone sharing everything are over. Now we get to see who's really holding the good cards and who's been getting by on bluffing. For my money I think Twitter is more dependent on third parties than third parties are on Twitter. Not just Instagram, but the entire ecosystem of apps that grew up around Twitter in the bygone days of warm fuzzies. Twitter seems like someone throwing a great party who slowly throws out everyone interesting because they want to be the center of attention. Once all the interesting people are gone though, the partiers are trickling out, and the interesting people who made the party hot have moved on.

danso 14y ago
> For my money I think Twitter is more dependent on third parties than third parties are on Twitter. Not just Instagram, but the entire ecosystem of apps that grew up around Twitter in the bygone days of warm fuzzies. Really? I mean, in the current scenario? The first-party Twitter apps on mobile devices are pretty strong, enough that I don't even use TweetBot even though I paid for it. And while Instagram was nice, I don't think I used Twitter to view Instagram...in fact, I'm pretty happy with Twitter just being used to share links, with which I click through. The value of Twitter is that its network effect is such that "everyone" (at least most people in media and tech) are on it. They may have gotten on their through third-party apps, but now Twitter has done an adequate job on their own apps and it'll be awhile before the Twitter network will ever migrate to some other place (and where to, Google+?)
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  The iOS app is nice, but I don't use it nearly as much as the "official" desktop app (which has been completely abandoned). Gone are the days when people would respond in real-time, now everybody is drowned in a huge feed.
  - drp4929 14y ago
    If you don't want to get drowned by your feed then you want to keep an eye on http://signups.simplrinc.com http://signups.simplrinc.com

ricardobeat 14y ago

They will die together, separated.

guiambros 14y ago

It's hard to feel any sympathy for Twitter on this Instagram debacle, given their track record. Of course, users will pay the price, with a poor user experience and some additional clicks (plus ads, FB cookies, etc). Pity. That's the problem with being user instead of customer. Nice and free, exactly because we are the product. I see a Chrome extension coming in 3...2..

psychotik 14y ago

So what are they doing, technically, that makes it hard for the twitter app to display an image inline? That URL just points to an image, so I'm not sure what broke here.

jmathai 14y ago
Twitter has an existing standard that allows them to easily discover what image to embed. It's called Twitter Cards and Instagram had the markup for it but apparently removed it. It's unfortunate because any site can use Twitter Cards to have their content displayed well in Tweets. So in my mind it's the right approach for a network as large as Twitter. Facebook has similar tags. https://dev.twitter.com/docs/cards https://dev.twitter.com/docs/cards
- psychotik 14y ago
  Thanks. Most media sites have Open Graph tags - I wonder why Twitter didn't just reuse those. I understand they're from a competitor but they are somewhat standard. All these proprietary tags add unnecessary overhead to developers and bloat to pages. Sigh!
  - jmathai 14y ago
    Agreed. That wouldn't have stopped Instagram from removing support though.
  - natrius 14y ago
    Twitter does reuse Open Graph tags. https://dev.twitter.com/docs/cards#open-graph https://dev.twitter.com/docs/cards#open-graph

caycep 14y ago

back to IRC we go...

clark-kent 14y ago

How about making instagram.com awesome so that it's a better experience than twitter?