Twitter to Launch Photo Sharing

Created on Thursday, 02 June 2011 16:48

Twitter announced this week they’ll be adding a photo-sharing service through the image hosting site, Photobucket. Photobucket has been around since 2003, boasting over 23 million users. Since Twitter is now being used by 13% of all Internet users, this merge will be huge for both companies involved. Photobucket’s large user list combined with Twitter’s steady increase of new users will continue to make Twitter one of the most important social media sites around.

Photobucket’s CEO Tom Munro said, "Photobucket is excited to be chosen to power this extension of Twitter."  We are confident that together we can seamlessly provide a simple, intuitive photo sharing experience for Twitter users"  Some thought popular image sharing sites like Twitpic and Yfrog  would have made the merge since both companies specifically targeted twitter users. But now, they will be in direct competition with them both. Twitter wanted it’s own service to make the process easier for non-techy people when uploading and sharing photos. Photobucket's servers will be used to store images sent in by tweeters, although the actual service itself appears to be managed directly by Twitter. The company expects the feature to go live in the next several weeks.

Spokesmen for Twitter have stated this is not competition with Facebook  Facebook hosts the largest number of images with an estimated 600 million users worldwide. Twitter will now be elevating itself to a more important position by adding this new function. Potential users may have been turned off by the 140 character post limit. Now, with the ability to share images, this may bring in more people who prefer a personalized social media experience.