Instagram Blocks Deep Linking to Snapchat and Telegram

Instagram, the Facebook-owned image platform, is closing down the ‘add me’ deep links for other public networks within its applications. Previously, its customers were allowed to post ‘add me’ or ’follow me’ web links in the site area within their personal page.

These were directly connecting them to other accounts they had created on public services’ applications. Now, you cannot type links to Snapchat and Telegram accounts anymore and Instagram displays a message saying that such third-party connections are not supported by its platform.

A spokesperson for Instagram said that the change was indeed implemented, due to the attempts made by many people to take advantage of the website’s huge online reach. This was an exceptional use-case, but not in the way in which this system was designed, so other kinds of hyperlinks are still permitted.

These other kinds of links which are allowed to be inserted include weblogs, sites, YouTube videos, iTunes accounts where popular Instagram using superstars might be offering their newest record, for instance. Just do not try to add a clickable hyperlink to gather followers for Snapchat and Telegram profiles.

It is uncertain the number of Instagram customers that is taking advantage of these ‘add me’ deep links to Snapchat or Telegram from their Instagram pages. For the celebrities involved in it, sending people to a labeled web page seems a more conventional self-promotional strategy and is not affected by this block.

In an email to tech media, Telegram’s creator Pavel Durov has defined the idea as being clearly harmful for his website, even if the deep linking prevention does also have a negative impact on competing texting application Snapchat, as mentioned above.

Also, he revealed that deep linking to other public networks, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, VK, Facebook and Periscope, is still working. So it seems there is some particular discrimination against certain platforms.

Last weeks, Telegram said that it reached 100 million active customers per month, so it was able to gain some strength in this battle. However, Facebook too might close down deep linking and stop one major opportunity where utilization of the competing services could thrive.

That said, it is uncertain what percentage of Telegram’s monthly users are actually crawlers, which is a well-known and widely copied function on the system. This strategy lets third party designers to use the website’s API to make software profiles that offer computerized services, like providing images in reply to keywords.

Image source: Inspiredworlds