

Twitter launching photo service - jimisir
http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/30/twitter-is-launching-its-own-photosharing-service/

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code_duck
This would have been a savvy move from Twitter about say, 4 years ago when it
was clear people were going to be sharing a lot of images.

As regards developers, their message is to not build "client apps that mimic
or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience". However, the
mainstream Twitter client experience may at any time be expanded to include
whatever you're doing already. That's always a danger when building on someone
else's API like this, but the 'inflection point' comes when a company actually
starts replacing 3rd party developers' tools with official products.

That should help developers decide what to do next... In my case, it's more
clear that I don't want to have anything to do with the Twitter API.

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tptacek
Sounds about right. Twitter seems happy to be one of the best ways to add a
social component to otherwise standalone applications, but doesn't seem to
care at all about facilitating applications that do nothing but "enhance"
Twitter itself.

Building applications that are nothing but Twitter enhancements is probably
not a good bet; at least, not if it's your _only_ bet.

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tptacek
I hope they do. For normal people, photo sharing is probably more important
than link sharing. And, with photo sharing delegated to random third parties,
Twitter users are left at the mercy of companies like Twitpic who will license
their photos to agencies.

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danielrhodes
I don't mean to be a negative Nancy here, but Twitter's direction in the past
year has been anything but elegant.

Many of these features should have been done a long time ago, instead of
letting an eco system grow as deeply as it did, knowing full well that any
opportunity to monetize the platform would involve cannibalizing developers
and creating resentment.

Having said all that, I'm looking forward to these changes as it will
definitely create a more cohesive user experience.

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ja2ke
Twitter has made their nut as the collective tissue of the social web. Sure
the tweets are actual content, but they're always about something external --
twitter is most often used for seeing what people have to say and share about
something else. If they move into photos that's a move into primary content,
it means they're no longer just dealing with hosting the connective tissue -
photos, videos, blogs are the meat. I dont have any conclusion to draw from
there, because im conflicted. Philosophically that really bugs me, but
practically I'll probably use it.

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phlux
Look at it this way; they are thrashing and see photos as a natural extension
of the tweet format as the photos are singular pieces of content, but they are
far far larger than a tweet.

If there is anything we know from twitters past; uptime will be minimal with a
bandwidth intensive service such as this.

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hboon
Do they run their own CDNs now? Otherwise why would they have major issues
hosting images? Scaling Twitter timelines was a way different problem.

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tuhin
In theory this is an ideal move for a company like Twitter. They are more and
more going the route of Media company.

However what is not cool is the way in which these directions have been taken
and the path chosen over the past year or so.

So yes great move for Twitter, the ecosystem and millions of users but
somewhere this is getting ugly for companies that were solving this purpose
for over 4 years when Twitter did not feel it necessary to do so for "users".

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kmfrk
After the uncertainty and FUD TwitPic created in the minds of a lot of people,
I think this decision is going to receive a lot less backlash than it
originally would.

Personally, though, I still don't like how they are pushing out third-party
developers, but I see some understandable motives for the decision.

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dstein

      warning the ecosystem to stay away from building “client apps that mimic
      or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience.” 
    

That might be what they're saying, but what I'm hearing is stay away from any
Twitter integration.

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jimisir
this is pretty interesting. I wonder what would happen to the twitpics and
yfrogs of the world...

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jmathai
Easy, their sole acquisition target would disappear overnight...as will most
of the value they provide today.

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jimisir
haha, yeah i think so too. But they might add some features maybe integrate
with instagram (if they dont have that already--I dunno) that might still give
em an advantage...

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jmathai
Not sure what type of feature they could add to integrate with instagram. For
lack of a better word, they were a parasite on Twitter. Whatever Twitter
implements will be better and more seamless than Twitpic.

Same goes for instagram, I think.

I don't think Twitpic will or can foster a community which means they'll
always have to leach off someone else's. That's a tough battle to win.

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brianbreslin
How are they going to monetize this? I'd love to see them buy
<http://pikchur.com> (disclaimer: founders are very good friends of mine)

