Instagram update disables "Find Twitter Friends" feature

A new version of Instagram (free) just arrived this morning, along with the news that the photoblogging tool now has 80 million users. But there's something missing in the update. If you've ever used the "Twitter Friends" feature, you'll be dismayed to find that it's no longer available.

As you can see in the screenshot from Instagram at right, Twitter is no longer allowing its users to find friends via the Twitter API. You can still tweet your photos; you just can't tap the "Twitter Friends" button to automatically follow your Twitter friends who also use Instagram.

Our sister site TechCrunch reports that the feature is "missing due to API restrictions from Twitter's end, restrictions likely resulting from concerns about Instagram's scale and its strain on data pulls." The feature is still available in other social apps, particularly Foursquare.

Alexia Tsotsis at TechCrunch speculates that "this is a competitive move on Twitter's part, a direct attack on Facebook's social graph via limiting access to its recent acquisition (Instagram)." Twitter recently moved to pull tweets off of LinkedIn; whatever the next skirmish in the API battles may be, it's starting to get nasty out there.