If this then Instagram is a bit mean

In the good old days, when you uploaded photos to Instagram, if you had an account with Flickr, you probably also used Instagram’s share option to parallel upload your photos there too. And while you were at it, you probably sent a copy to Facebook and Twitter for good measure too. It was just another couple of taps and who’s counting anyway. Some purists used to moan a bit about it, flooding the internet with retro-filtered pictures. But then Instagram got a bit snooty about Twitter and decided to stop letting Twitter include a preview of its photos, via its cards feature, forcing users to view them on its own website. I’d also noticed that if you posted to Flickr, you couldn’t parallel-post to Instagram. In fact, have you noticed that Instagram is the only platform that doesn’t let you post photos via any other platform. A bit anti-social, I thought.

Then I found a great website called If This Then That, or IFTTT.com. It allows you to take parallel posting a step further. There are more social media platforms than I could ever imagine. Ones with elephants and armchairs for logos. Who knows what they all do. But here’s a simple example: every time iphoggy bloggy produces a new blog, you can generate a Gmail email to yourself (I believe you can already do this by Subscribing on the contact page, but belt and braces, eh?). Click here if you want to use this marvel of modern-day technology. Here’s another recipe that I found also: “Bypass Instagram turning off Twitter cards”. Take that Instagram, I thought. Now, I thought (even more), was there a recipe that allowed you to parallel-post to Instagram via Flickr? I’ve been using the new Flickr app lately in part because it allows you to post the full resolution of your picture, instead of a reduced size on Instagram. If Flickr then Instagram. I started browsing the recipes. Surely someone must already have set one up. But no, I couldn’t find it. I tweeted IFTTT and asked. No, they replied, Instagram doesn’t give them access to its API to allow you to do that. So let’s get that straight: if you post to Instagram, they allow you to spread every one of your retro-filtered pics to every half-bit Elephant and Arm-Chair app on the internet, but it won’t return the favour. Meanies.

A bit anti-social