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Let's talk today about how two of most influential social networks in the world settled an old grudge and what it says about the prospects for a more open web as tech giants attempt to create a metaverse.
Instagram made a nine-year-old announcement on Wednesday. Instagram has been sharing photos to Twitter since 2012 as text links. Instagram links will now include a preview of an image, just like they did before Instagram sold it to Facebook. This is because of professional rivalries and competitive pressures that have led to a worsening user experience.
Instagram posted Wednesday that they said it wouldn't happen. This was a surprise, but it happened. You can't really appreciate the path to peace without wine, pizza, or backyard dealmaking.
Instagram launched in October 2010. It was perhaps the most convenient way to send photos to Twitter at that time. Twitter was not able to host photos at the time. You had to upload them via third-party services such as Yfrog or Photobucket, which have confidence-inspiring names. Because of its intuitive filters, Instagram quickly rose to prominence as a popular way to tweet photos.
The founders of the apps also had a close personal relationship. Jack Dorsey, the Twitter CEO, had previously worked with Kevin Systrom, future Instagram co-founder, at Odeo. He was one of Instagram's most important early supporters after it launched. To his large following, Dorsey began regularly tweeting Instagram photos. Soon, he was joined soon by other early-to-Twitter stars like Justin Bieber or Snoop Dogg. Twitter was able to benefit from easy photo sharing. Instagram, however, saw rapid growth due to a feature that allowed you to find your Twitter friends on the app.
All that changed in April 2012 when Facebook purchased Instagram for $715million. Twitter also attempted to purchase the company but was unsuccessful due to Mark Zuckerberg's promise to Systrom and Mike Krieger to reach global scale without interference. Dorsey was hurt and decided to stop posting on Instagram permanently. Twitter stopped Instagram from accessing its following graph a few months later. This prevented users from finding their friends quickly on the platform.
We had wine, sausages and I brought it up.
In December, Facebook responded by removing photos from Instagram from the Twitter timeline. Sarah Frier explains in her book No Filter that Facebook executives believed photo previews were only helping Twitter grow and expand its ad inventory. The company ended link previews and Twitter became so upset about it that it published a story to New York Times alleging that Systrom had perjured during the sale of Facebook. (Aside from some bad feelings, nothing really happened.
Nine years passed. Instagrams co-founders quit Facebook in 2018. Instagram had reached 1 billion users by that time, with most of these users younger than their Facebook counterparts. Twitter was in a prolonged state of stagnation. The company only started to rise again in the last two years when it added hundreds of employees and began shipping new products quickly under the direction of Kayvon Beykpour, the product manager.
In an interview, Adam Mosseri, Instagram chief, said that the ban on Twitter previews being used internally would occasionally come up. Dorsey sent him an email asking if they could find a solution. There were always higher priorities and lingering concerns about competition. He said that Instagram and Twitter compete more in Japan for photo sharing. So it was.
Twitter was open to cross-platform collaborations, however. It launched a hilarious Instagram account. It allowed the sharing of tweets directly on Instagram stories. It began embedding YouTube videos directly into tweets.
I read a Verge article about this item, and in the unprofessional fashion of many journalists, quoted it and then tweeted it. Now do Instagram photos. Thank you! I posted March. We would love to. It takes two to tango, Beykpour clapped back. Mosseri was tagged and I asked if I could tango with him. Mosseri replied with a GIF showing a man alone dancing in the kitchen.
Now do Instagram photos. We appreciate your support! https://t.co/K957UcuQWo Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) March 18, 2021
Then, I quickly forgot that any of it had ever occurred.
Beykpour said to me yesterday that this interaction had improbably triggered a series events that resulted in Bruce Falcks and Mosseri enjoying pizza in Bruce Falcks' backyard.
Credit to Adam. Beykpour said this week. It was not something I expected to happen when I asked. It was impossible to predict, despite it being a rumour. The gods had forbid it.
Falck is the head of revenue products at Twitter. He was previously the CEO of Turn, an adtech company. There he met Vishal Shah, a former employee who left just before Falck assumed control. Shah was promoted to head of product at Instagram and is now vice president of metaverse.
Falck reached out after the Twitter tango exchange to Shah to ask if his bosses and he would be open to a parley. It was May and the Bay Area's COVID fears were still simmering. Instead of meeting up at a restaurant they met up in Falcks backyard for pizza.
Mosseri and Beykpour had been in contact before, once when they were on a plane to South America. They had never been together for extended periods of time until that evening.
Beykpour was the one who brought up the topic in the end.
We had wine, sausages, and then Beykpour finally raised the issue.
Instagram did not have any philosophical objections to photos being displayed in their timeline.
Mosseri said to Beykpour that Instagram did not have any philosophical objections to photos being displayed in the timeline. It was more a matter of allowing engineers to work on it. Mosseri stated that he would investigate the matter.
Beykpour was not sure at the moment if he believed his words.
We thought, "Okay, that's nice," Beykpour stated. We didn't think it would go anywhere. It did.
Mosseri, unbeknownst of the Twitter team, kept a list of finally features stuff that could easily be built that the user base had been asking for. It's the low-hanging fruits of the product world, such as allowing everyone to add links in their stories. This feature was shipped by Instagram last week.
These are not a strategic priority for the company, but they can be a time-consuming task, he explained.
Mosseri stated that he only had two questions about turning the link previews back off at his home office. It would create a risk for Instagram. It would also create value for the users.
He wasn't sure he could accurately measure the risk. He said that users liked it and so he sent a few engineers to test it.
He thinks that he should do more of the things people ask for. This seems like a good idea.
It took several months to test, but it was finally ready for use by this week. Beykpour said he was thankful to Mosseri, even though he needed to help his rival in order to get Instagram to use large previews for images. (Developers have the option to choose which Twitter embed format they prefer; I asked Mosseri about this and he replied that Instagram was only starting small.
Mosseri held a hackathon in the meantime to develop more final features. Some of these will soon be shipping. He volunteered to help me before I could ask. He seemed to enjoy the newfound sense of goodwill that Twitter has brought him.
He said that he believed it was good to bury old hatchets.
Particularly considering his parent company's ambition to create a world where companies are more integrated than today, a goal Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared to me when he announced the company's pivot to the metaverse.
Mosseri stated that platforms will need to find ways to be more transparent. This is a tricky task. Data portability can have huge privacy implications. As an industry, we should figure this out.
The only thing that could end the Instagram-Twitter feud was patience and the willingness to prioritize users' needs over strategic concerns.
Beykpour stated that people don't live on just one product. He also noted that Twitter has launched an integration with Snapchat since December last year. They are navigating between them. It is crucial to make those who are making these traversals feel comfortable and colorful.
