Facebook owned, Instagram has started blocking ‘add me’ links to rival platforms Telegram and Snapchat , in users’ bios. Until recently, users added their Snapchat profile links to their instagram bios but this is no more. Unfortunately you can no longer ride on your Insta-fame to re-create the same following on these platforms any more.
Following this week’s Snapchat’s CEO announcement to investors of the platform now favorably rivalling Facebook’s video sharing statistics with an average of 800million Video Views per day. This is arguably a competitive move by Instagram to cut out cross linking traffic to rival platforms.
An Instagram spokesperson confirmed the change to Mashable saying in a statement that the types of links it is blocking represent a “rare” use case.
We’ve removed the ability to include ‘add me’ links on Instagram profile pages. This was a rare use-case, and not the way our platform was intended to be used. Other types of links are still allowed.
Instagram is still allowing social media links like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Swarm, Tumblr, iTunes and more on their platform.
Telegram Messenger App tweeted, “Another @Facebook tentacle closes on users’ ability to share a link to their Telegram profile. #hypocrisy.”
For Telegram, this is not only the first but a second Facebook owned product that has curtailed user’s freedom to share links to their Telegram profiles. The same was seen done by Whatsapp last year, also arguably their biggest rival in the Instant Messaging space.
