InstaTwit: A Chrome extension that solves the Instagram/Twitter photo drama

Well that didn’t take too long: After Instagram officially cut off its photo integration with Twitter today, one developer has already created a Chrome extension that reverses Instagram’s change on your desktop.

Michael Schonfeld, a developer evangelist at the payments company Dwolla, whipped the InstaTwit extension together in just an hour and a half. Once installed, it places Instagram photos back into Twitter Cards — just as if the drama from this week between the two companies never happened.

In an e-mail to VentureBeat, Schonfeld said he was conflicted about Instagram’s move away from Twitter: “On one hand, as an entrepreneur, I can understand their wish to have people go through their site (Instagram’s, that is), yet on the other hand, as a user  — I feel used… I’ve helped grow this amazing network, and now that it reached a certain level of capacity, I’m being mistreated. I don’t think this move was necessarily influenced by Facebook, however.”

I’ve confirmed that InstaTwit works as advertised: the Instagram image above looks fine in Chrome after installing the extension, while it’s just a link when viewed in any other browser.

While it’s not a complete solution — InstaTwit won’t help on tablets or smartphones, for example — it’s a nice and simple fix until Instagram can make peace with Twitter.

Schonfeld notes that both companies could potentially break the extension, but he’s not too worried about that possibility: “On Instagram’s side, they can change the structure of their URL shortener, or even disable direct access to the photo files themselves. In any case, I doubt it’ll be very hard to adjust the extension accordingly.”