People love to share photos on Twitter, so it wasn’t much of a surprise to see many independent application developers focused on facilitating just that through tools using the micro-sharing service’s API. Many of them have been submitted to us, and we wrote about a few in the past, from stand-alone services like TwitPic, Twitxr, Pixim to add-on services from photo sharing startups, like ImageShack’s YFrog and PhotoBucket’s TwitGoo.
Now a new contender, TweetPhoto, has launched its service and plans to go head-to-head with TwitPic, which seems to have emerged as the leader of the pack with over 1 million users and traffic going through the roof (sometimes bringing along the same scalability problems that plagued Twitter for years).
In a way, TweetPhoto is more like Posterous, which allows users to micro-blog by e-mail and also doubles as a photo sharing service with Twitter integration (at least the way I use it). The service lets you upload photos by e-mail, mobile phone or the web, and automatically posts links to the images on Twitter and Facebook. Conveniently, TweetPhoto automatically geo-tags photos and offers decent search functionality and trending topics, features that are currently lacking on TwitPic.
TweetPhoto also added a social layer which allows you to tag, favorite and comment on photos but also see who favorited and commented on your own photos. It also offers a way for users to embed custom widgets on their blogs and of course even boasts its own URL shortening service, dubbed Pic.gd.
Of course, there’s no guarantee more features means TweetPhoto will stand a chance against TwitPic and other services that have been around for years. People seem to be comfortable with using TwitPic despite its lack of features (which is being worked on, by the way), and I doubt more features will make them switch any time soon. That said, if you were on the look-out for a Twitter photo sharing app that offers that extra bit of functionality, I’d suggest you give TweetPhoto a spin.
I wonder why twitter (which is becoming so popular) dont add this useful (photo sharing) feature to their site. that will have saved lots of time for everyone.
TweetPhoto is hot. I love it. But we have to wait to see if it overthrows TwitPic. I doubt if it would.
Sorry for the goody-goody comment above. TweetPhoto is good for nothing. No shrinking of images on Facebook and also, not so well crafted as TwitPic. I would rather go with TwitPic than get worked up using TweetPhoto.
Because the chimps that are barely holding that thing together as it is, couldn’t possibly handle photo sharing.
How would I submit my site tweetjunction.com to Techcrunch?
It tops twitpic, twitgoo and tweetphoto!
Upload and share pictures music and videos. Write a blog. Create an event. Create public and private groups.
Everything is Tweeable with our unique Tweet It button!
Thank you,
JP
I rate Posterous although haven’t had much opportunity to share photos. I will give TweetPhoto a chance and feel that services that offer more than just a Twitter photo sharing service will last the longest!
I think Mobypicture.com is also a very good competitor because it supports multiple kinds of media.
The best form of flattery…having multiple new sites pop up with the sole purpose of increasing the functionality of your site (subsequently having those sites become very popular themselves). This all feels very familiar…
I hate them all. Almost all require you to give them your twitter password. Only pix.im seems to support OAuth API.
I just tried it – what garbage! The front page of the site promises that it “automatically publish[es] photos to Facebook.” I wishfully thought this might mean that it would 1) post my message + micro link to Twitter and meanwhile 2) post a great thumbnail to FBook – while ideally 3) being clever enough to de-dupe the posting via smart engineering with the FB & Tw API’s (so I wouldn’t get both my Twitter post/link and the thumbnail popping up simultaneously in my FB feed – friends unfriend friends who spam).
Anyway – the most egregious problem is that the thumbnail quality in FBook is APPALLING – it cropped the photo (I should say “crapped the photo”) randomly and very, very narrowly so it looks like an abstract splotch. Totally useless – no one will click through to that.
Second – not shocking, but disappointing – no de-duping.
So – if offering your followers a “quality experience” is at all important, you still need to manually submit your images to FB so that actual representations of them will publish to your feed, and submit a shortened link to Twitter via TwitPic. I was hoping this would be an elegant solution to an existing cumbersome situation – but instead it solves no problems while creating another one.
AVOID.
Honestly none of those services can keep up with http://www.pikchur.com, I’ve been using it for a while now and I love it. I’m surprised why both Techcrunch and Mashable keep ignoring it
i’ve tried TweetPhoto, and it’s very very nice! but i think that in this case – less is more and that’s why TwitPic will less.
hey, and on another metter:
hey, and on another meter: the add video comment with seesmic is sweet!
Jesus mary mother of christ, not even satan can make this much out of 140 characters.
C’mon for real, how much they paying you guys.
How do you know ?, Techcrunch is in Love. When your in Love you become out of control.
Its the power of Love.
Techcrunch and Twitter sitting in a Tree.
K
I
S
S
I
N
G.
Oh, really? Congrats!!! When did you both start dating each other? And what about your date with iPhone?
Come on… twitpic is the best no need for a new service
considering twitpic is a one man operation from the bedroom (or whereever) – I’ll always be loyal to it – there’s now something about a david slaying the goliath that i like – same with plentyoffish. One person sees something that others want, builds it on his own, and it grows beyond the wildest expectations.
If twitpic has bugs or is slow or whatever, fine, the dude isn’t funded with millions in the bank, blah blah… and it’s not an offshoot of another business with resources just trying to play the game. I hope he makes millions to be honest because it’s a great zero to hero story.
and it does everything I need it to do. basic interface, simple to understand, easy to do.
from the one man operation point of view, it’s great to see this.
more features? keep it simple guys, just keep it simple. KISS is the key, a photo sharing service is for photosharing, (per email, between social media, per RSS…) the rest is just too much: url-shortening, comments, trending…etc. Just keep it simple, and do it well.
Sorry off topic. I can’t find the everyone tab on twitter after integrating the search on homepage…any idea why its gone?
We still like around here http://www.tweetube.com … you can share up to 5 pictures with one link!
Actualy yeah. http://tweetube.com lets you comment, favorite and all that cool stuff, you can share links (try MP3) and … it was never mentioned here .. wonder why :l
It will be interesting to see if over throws TwitPic. There has been such an explosion of Twitter related products it is hard to keep up.
I use Twitpic often, it’s a great service. As a one-man show, Twitpic has captured an astonishing percentage of the photo-sharing on twitter. Anyone have metrics on this? Twitpic seems to be hitting some scaling limits lately though. Let’s get that guy some help.
As for these other services mentioned in comments, I’ve found that pixelpipe.com serves me pretty well as the first node in my microsyndication chain: when a better photo-sharing service comes along, I’ll add the pipe.
CG
http://greacen.com
http://twitter.com/greacen
Not sure I like this feature:
“See who viewed any photo”
I don’t really want someone to know I was looking at their vacation photos because I’m jealous that I’m not on a beach…
I was always under the impression that updating facebook via an API, well normally a curl/pagescrape of the m.facebook.com page violated FB’s TOS and could prompt an account shutdown of the user concerned.
Does tweetphoto use OAuth? If not, then its a potential phishing site and likely to get clobbered by the inbuilt chrome/firefox filters if enough people report them.
Still the majority of these services will be cut off at the knees when Twitter introduces pictures
I have a hunch tweetphoto may shortly kick the bucket. Twitter account (http://twitter.com/tweetphoto) disabled, blog (http://tweetphoto.com/blog) redirects to their homepage.
It’s also possible that they’re restructuring their PR presence, after this: http://tinyurl.com/qlpd4v it wouldn’t be a stupid idea.