Earlier this week, Instagram dropped support for "Twitter cards," a design feature that allowed users to embed multimedia content into their tweets.
The result: Instagram photos embedded on Twitter looked pretty weird.
Now Twitter has launched a photo filter platform of its own, which it said would facilitate photo-sharing.
Photo-sharing and photo-filtering, of course, are Instagram's home turf. "Starting today, you’ll be able to edit and refine your photos, right from Twitter," Twitter's Coleen Baik wrote in a post on the company blog. "The latest versions of Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android introduce a few new ways to enhance the images you tweet."
To summarize: Instagram slapped Twitter in the face, and Twitter said, "No problem, we don't need you anyway, buddy."
We haven't tested out the Twitter filters, so we don't know how they stack up to Instagram's, but as Daniel Terdiman of CNET has noted, it's not impossible to imagine Twitter winning this particular battle.
"Twitter has launched a very credible challenge to the crown," Terdiman writes. "To be sure, Instagram has a massive lead, and a very passionate community. But Twitter has a nine-figure user base, and now that it is offering filters -- albeit just eight, while Instagram has 18 free filters -- it can begin to chip away at its competitor's lead."
In related news – hat tip to the Guardian – Twitter co-founder Biz Stone yesterday tweeted out a shot at Kevin Systrom, the CEO of Instagram.
"Bummer my Instagram photo didn't show up on Twitter (Systrom Failure?)," Stone wrote.
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