Instagram Photo Previews Come Back To Twitter Timelines After 9-Year Stalemate

After nine years, Instagram and Twitter are getting pack on the same page.

Preview images of Instagram photos will now appear when creators share links to Twitter — though the images aren’t full-size yet, but rather a relatively tiny thumbnail (pictured above).

Since 2012, Instagram photos shared to Twitter have only appeared as text links following a dispute that dates back to Instagram’s acquisition by Facebook in 2012. Given that Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey and Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom were friends and colleagues, and Twitter was also seeking to purchase Instagram, the sale to Facebook resulted in bad blood, recounts reporter Casey Newton in his Platformer newsletter.

Subsequently, Twitter blocked Instagram’s access to its ‘following graph’, which enabled Instagram users to easily find friends to follow. In turn, Instagram stopped showing preview photos on Twitter.

But, after Newton bemoaned the loss of the feature in March, garnering responses from both Twitter’s head of consumer product Kayvon Beykpour and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri, the wheels were set into motion for a detente.

After getting together for dinner, Mosseri told Beykpour that it was simply a matter of freeing up engineers to work on the fix, concluding that he ultimately didn’t believe the integration would pose a competitive risk to Instagram. It would also mark what Mosseri calls a ‘finally feature’ for Instagram, per Platformer — an easy fix that users have clamored for that doesn’t necessarily benefit the company strategically but makes users happy.

“I think it’s good to bury old hatchets,” Mosseri told Newton.