Twitter, the social networking and micro-blogging service is expected to launch its own photo service in order to compete with other photo-sharing services like Twitpic, Yfrogs, and Flickr. According to a report from TechChrunch, that quoted multiple anonymous sources, twitter is getting ready to unveil its own photo-sharing service.
Twitter, based in San Francisco, founded in March 2006 and launched publicly in July 2006, allows users to post their latest updates called tweets (limited to 140 words) using web, text message or instant message. According to Compete.com, Twitter moved up to the third-highest-ranking social networking site in January 2009 from its previous rank of twenty-second. In 2010 about 65 million tweets were posted each day, equaling about 750 tweets sent each second, according to Twitter.
Nowdays, Twitter users are using third party services like Twitpic and Yfrog, to attach photos in their tweets. Links of the images appear in the tweets and the followings/followers of the users can see the photos by visiting the link in the tweet. Companies like Twitpic and Yfrog are making millions of dollars of revenue by selling ad spaces on the same page as image, while on the other side Twitter has been unable to make a good amount of money; so this could be the option to make some revenue.
Last moth we also heard that Twitter is considering to add pages for brands just like Facebook, to improve the Twitter experience for the users, but up to date, no hints about that feature from Twitter administration.
The announcement of photo-sharing service is expected at the D9 conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, this week, where the company chief executive Dick Costolo will be speaking on Wednesday.
Recently, Twitter has more than 200 million users, but still there are no hints of advertisement by Twitter. There is a possibility that the upcoming photo-service may be monetized by including ads and this will surely help Twitter to enhance itself as a commercial model. The other possible option of this new service could be provided using Twimg.com, which was owned by Twitter in July 2010.
Last week Twitter acquired TweetDeck and this move cost them $40 million including cash and Twitter stock. “This acquisition is an important step forward for us, ” quoted in the post. “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.”
Twitter is also planning to buy AdGrok for less than $10 million, a firm that creates contextual keywords on Google Adwords, which is another clear sign that Twitter really want to make some revenue now.
