Twitter has introduced a new feature for iPhone and Android users. It’s latest update will allow users to post photos with built in filters. The new feature has initially 8 photo filters out of which anyone can be chosen. The photos also can be viewed in a grid system.
Essentially, Twitter is mimicking the features of Instagram. Instagram is owned by Facebook now and that makes this a lot more interesting.
Instagram Vs Twitter
Instagram has a similar service but in the past week it toyed with the idea of removing support for Twitter cards on its website. Finally they did end up removing Twitter cards completely. Twitter cards are used basically to allow users to check photos or snippets of a webpage, inside the Twitter stream and not requiring users to visit another page.
Instagram probably took this step to integrate itself more closely with Facebook. This could be mainly to ensure that Instagram also could bring in more advertising revenues. Instagram at the moment of all its fame, is still is not really monetized.
Check out Twitter’s the video intro of photo filters:
I can’t help but thinking that at the end both Twitter and Instagram are losing out and short-changing users. Instagram is actually at some stage giving up relevance on Twitter, while Twitter might end up not using the social juice from Instagram’s popularity. Users in the meanwhile will just have to make do with more restrictions and a less open system, while Twitter and Facebook keep marking out their territory.
What are your views on Twitter’s new photo filter feature? Do drop in your comments.
(via Twitter Blog)