So I guess it’s not just Chris Brown who has issues with Twitter these days.  Though the singer recently made his way back to the social network, it now appears that Instagram may be leaving.  A combination of events could add a new layer between your tweets and your fabulous filtered photos.

Back in April, Facebook spent one billion dollars to buy Instagram (yes, that’s billion with a ‘b’).  With approximately 25 million users at the time on iOS and another 50 million on the way with Android, Facebook was looking to take out the potential competition with the growing social network.  Facebook was also looking to beat Twitter to the punch, as Twitter was eyeing a buyout of the photo-sharing site as well.  Twitter and Instagram were previously friendly entities, but once the deal went through things started going south.  Kinda sounds like a bad reality TV episode, I know.

Instagram also wants to establish a web presence.  Up until now, Instagram hadn’t provided a place on the web where you could go to look at photos and make them available for viewing on a laptop or desktop computer.  They are now looking to change that, announcing recently that web profiles will be available soon.  Anyone with an Instagram account will now have a web profile at instagram.com/yourusername, and profiles will be rolling out over the next week.  And since they’ll be offering a place online for you to see your photos, they want you to go there and nowhere else, including Twitter.

What this means for Twitter is that you will no longer be able to see your Instagram photos embedded in your tweets.  You’ll have to click the link that will take you to the user’s new web profile page.  If a profile page hasn’t been established yet, the photo could appear cropped and improperly formatted in mobile apps.  If you are using the Instagram app, you will still have the ability to tweet the photo, only from now on just the link will show in the tweet. Twitter is already looking to strike back though, so the beef continues.  The social media network is developing their own photo filters so that you can take pictures while using the Twitter app and automatically add filters similar to Instagram.

Maybe it’s just me, but this all seems a bit petty.  With the millions of users on each of these social networks, it makes more sense to collaborate rather than exclude each other.  Depending on which network you use most, making it inconvenient to access could signal the downfall of the other.

Follow tech-life expert Stephanie Humphrey on Twitter.