A Picture Is Worth A Thousands Tweets: Pixim And TweetPhoto Emerge

There’s been a proliferation of photo sharing apps tied to Twitter, including TwitPic, Twitxr (review), and Yfrog (review), giving users a vast amount of choice when it comes to image sharing on the popular micro-blogging service. But TwitPic seems to have emerged as the leader of the pack.

The service took the top spot on our list of the most popular Twitter applications according to Compete and was in the top ten of Twitter clients according to TwitStat. Compete pegs TwitPic to have had close to 1.6 million unique visitors in February, and its traffic doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.

TwitStat says TwitPic is now the sixth most popular app used by Twitter clients, rising from being the tenth most popular app when we wrote about TwitStat’s rankings in mid-February. And TwitPic was even used to break news of the plane crash on the Hudson River.

Two more competitors to TwitPic have emerged. TweetPhoto and Pixim are both photo sharing applications attempting to challenge its dominance, so we took a closer look.

Pixim uses OAuth to integrate with Twitter (so you don’t have to give out your username and password) and lets you adjust privacy settings on sharing pictures, tag friends in uploaded pictures, view stats on how many people and who has seen you pictures and see your friend’s pictures on the site. Pixim is similar to TwitPic in many ways but the latter incorporates a geotagging tool and mobile support, which Pixim doesn’t have on its site. While Pixim is planning to release their API soon, TwitPic has the advantage of already being built into most popular Twitter clients, and users who are interested in photo sharing have a familiarity with TwitPic.

TweetPhoto, who plans to launch later this month, also lets you use OAuth to integrate your Twitter account. You are then able to send pics through your mobile phone or upload pics via the site. Like TwitPic, TweetPhoto lets users comment on pictures on-site and tag photos. TweetPhoto will also feature integration with Facebook Connect, which is pretty cool, and something both TwitPic and Pixim lack. Like Pixim, TweetPhoto plans to release its own API, but might confront the same issue with TwitPic’s dominance.