Los Angeles — It seems that Twitter’s recent app expansion effort might have just emboldened. In yet another move that stands to put it in direct competition with hordes of third party developers that have become integral to its existence, The rumor mill has been swirling Monday afternoon with reports that microbloging site Twitter is on the verge of unveiling its own photo-sharing service that would compete with the likes of Twitpic and Yfrog, according to a fresh report from TechCrunch.
TechCrunch first disclosed its claim, citing multiple unnamed sources. And now, All Things D has reported that seems to have confirmed the story as well, going so far as to say the service will be announced by Twitter at the D9 conference (organized, incidentally, by All Things D) in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo lined-up to speak on Wednesday.
Moreover, if Twitter users want to attach photos to their tweets, they can only share them via third-party services such as Twitpic and Yfrog, but as the report noted, an in-house service would have a significant advantage over competing apps.
It would not come as too huge of a surprise if these reports turn out to be true. As described out by All Things D, the likes of TwitPic and yfrog derive money through ads displayed on the same page as the image. Up to now Twitter has been pretty good at not making money, and so this could be one way to bring in some cash. Last month there was talk of the company adding branded pages to its site as a way of creating a revenue stream.
Furthermore, the launch of a photo-sharing service would also be another signal of Twitter’s intent to take control of its ecosystem. In March, the microblogging site asked developers to stop building third-party clients.
Twitter is flinging money around; Last week Twitter announced on its blog that it had acquired desktop power user client TweetDeck for a sum thought to be in the region of $40 million. “This acquisition is an important step forward for us,” the post said. “TweetDeck provides brands, publishers, marketers and others with a powerful platform to track all the real-time conversations they care about. In order to support this important constituency, we will continue to invest in the TweetDeck that users know and love.”
However, it is not clear how a Twitter marked photo-sharing service would stand apart from current offerings, but obviously its status as a built-in solution could reasonably spell death for competing services.