There’s a very interesting article over at Wired by Ryan Tate on the social network giants’ announcements that they are shutting each other out of their photo apps.
Facebook altered its newly purchased Instagram so that it publishes only to Facebook, cutting rival Twitter off. Not to be undone, Twitter riposted by unveiling its own photo-editing system that is integrated into the main Twitter app and that sends its output only to Twitter. Google+ is the only of the three biggest social networks to have a read-only developer interface, meaning that outside apps (like Facebook’s Instagram) cannot publish into the system, but Google-owned Snapseed is able to.
Tate argues that all this wall-building is absurd and detrimental to not only users but may eventually cause the social networks’ own downfall:
All the walls popping up between the rival social empires are getting absurd. Imagine if Ford built a series of freeways where Chevys, Hondas, and other makes were banned – that’s Google+. Imagine if the Chevy Malibu drove at half speed on anything other than Chevy-owned freeways – that’s Facebook’s Instagram. Imagine if the California state freeway department Caltrans started building their own cars to discourage people from driving around in the half-speed Chevys – that’s Twitter.
…
If the big social networks keep playing empire-building games at the expense of users, the users might just decide they’ve had enough and build something unexpected that steals momentum from all the big players. That’s happened repeatedly over the past several decades…
Read the article at: Wired.