New York – In a surprising turn of events, micro-blogging outfit Twitter announced Monday that it was stepping into the photo-sharing business with a new editing tool that will allow mobile photographers to enhance, crop and edit photos and apply photo filters to their snaps from within Twitter-built applications, as it continues to compete with social media photo sharing app Instagram.
In an unexpected fracas between the duo, Twitter hurriedly introduced a new feature allowing members to apply retro and other filters to their images, replicating Instagram, the popular Facebook-owned photography app which has cut ties with the microblogging network.
Twitter has introduced its own image filters to replicate Instagram… Image Credit: (blog.twitter.com)
In a blog post on the company’s Web site, Coleen Baik, a senior designer at Twitter, said that sharing photos has been an important part of the Twitter experience.
“Starting today, you will be able to edit and refine your photos, right from Twitter,” Ms. Baik wrote. “The latest versions of Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android introduce a few new ways to enhance the images you tweet.”
Admittedly, the move is part of an effort by Twitter to seize more control over its service. It has gradually restricted how much data it shares with outside apps and introduced its own competing versions of them.
The introduction of in-house image filtering software by Twitter was anticipated. The move comes after Instagram last week unexpectedly terminated a link with Twitter Cards, a system that ensured photographs would be well presented if they were shared on Twitter. The reason, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom said, was to drive visitors to Instagram’s own website.
On the other hand, Instagram users still have the option of sharing their photos on Twitter, but now users will have to click through a link to see a photo, rather than seeing it directly in the tweet.
In a blog post, Twitter said its new in-house filters were provided by Aviary, a third-party photography editing firm and would be introduced to its mobile apps.
Among other things, the editing tool compliments a range of filters with different tints and hues, but all add the same sort of weathered look that made Instagram’s photo treatments so popular. Users can try on different filters by swiping from either edge of the screen. It offers eight filters, including “vintage”, “cool”, “gritty” and black and white.
Of late, Twitter has increasingly concentrating on photography, and recently redesigned its website to give images more prominence on profile pages. It is part of a strategy to emphasize “rich” multimedia material, in the hope it will mean members spend more time using Twitter, making it more attractive to advertisers.
Nevertheless, the update is available for Android operating systems only, and is expected on iOS soon. In 2011, Twitter allowed users to attach a photo directly to a tweet, but there was no way to edit that photo in Twitter until now.
Watch the tutorial below on how to use the new Twitter photo features, here is Phil, who has filled his phone with photos and is ready to share:
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