Following many weeks of speculation, all indications are that Twitter is finally set to announce the launch of its own photo sharing service, taking on competing services that have seen a surge in usage since Twitter gained popularity, including Flickr, Yfrog and of course, Twitpic.
AllThingsD.com has independently confirmed the news – first reported on TechCrunch – that Twitter’s own in-house Twitpic rival is indeed due to launch imminently, and that Twitter CEO Dick Costolo will make the announcement when he speaks at the D9 conference in California on Wednesday.
It’s also been suggested that, like Yfrog and Twitpic, Twitter’s service might generate revenue through advertising sales on linked image pages, as the company is working hard to develop sustainable revenue streams from its services.
In the short term, at least, the launch of a ‘native’ image sharing service from Twitter isn’t going to be good news for its competitors; it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to retain all of their traffic once Twitter starts offering a more integrated solution for sharing images.
Although little is known about the nuts and bolts of the service, it’s believed that it may be provided via twimg.com, a domain that Twitter has owned for some time now.
Twitter has been gradually increasing its influence over the ‘tweetosphere’; the company recently told developers to stop building their own Twitter apps and programs, citing a desire to create a more unified Twitter ‘experience’ across all platforms; and last week, the company spent $40m acquiring Tweetdeck, which is used by around 13% of Twitter users.
This latest announcement would seem to follow on from that, strengthening the Twitter offering, and giving users one less reason to seek tweeting satisfaction from third-party apps.