You might remember that Instagram and Twitter got into a shoving match last year that ended with Instagram just straight-up blocking the ability to share your photos as links on Twitter. So, you might be wondering why suddenly your feed is filled with photos that look exactly like they’re from Instagram. The answer is that they are posted to Instagram, and then to Twitter, through a somewhat roundabout hack that’s been around for a while but has suddenly caught on.
It’s actually less a hack and more of a simple social media daisy-chain. You can’t link Twitter and Instagram, but you can link Instagram and Tumblr. And you can link Tumblr to Twitter. So, in short, if you post an Instagram photo to your Tumblr, it will automatically go to your Twitter feed as a full-fledged photo; you only lose the Instagram social media features.
It’s a useful tool, especially for people who are sick of clicking Instagram links, but more importantly, it illustrates just how dumb these disputes between social networks are. Facebook likes to pretend it’s a magical walled garden full of wonders and friends you can’t get anywhere else, but to import your buddies elsewhere, you mostly just need a Yahoo! Mail account or to spend ten seconds on Friends To GMail.
In short, building these walls are dumb, because these networks have to have some degree of openness. And as technology advances, it becomes easier and easier to use that openness to simply do what we want anyway. So, social media mavens, do us all a favor and just drop it; we’re going to outwit you in the end anyway. Hey, at least you’ve still got our personal lives to sell.