Watch out TwitPic, Flickr is finally waking up to the power of letting users share links to their photos over Twitter. Flickr members can now sign up for the Flickr Twitter Beta, which allows them to link their Flickr and Twitter accounts (using Oauth) to their send out a Tweet whenever they upload a new photo via email. Here is an example from a Twitter employee (see screenshot), which then links to this photo on Flickr.
This only works for email uploads right now. Flickr gives you a special @photos.flickr.com email address which allows you to email photos directly into your Flickr stream from your mobile phone or desktop email. If you want to Tweet out a photo, you simply add “2twitter” at the end of your special email address before the @ sign. It is a bit kludgy. (Why not just add it as a feature to a mobile Flickr app instead?) But once you set it up, it is pretty easy. I just tried it myself. There is nothing like Tweeting out a photo to get an instant response.
This is just a taste of where Flickr might be going. Right now, you can’t choose to Tweet out photos you upload directly to the Website (yet). But the beta test points in that direction. Flickr is using its own shortened URL (http://flic.kr). And it is letting users choose which photos to share via Twitter instead of automatically sharing all uploaded photos, which is the right way to do it.
(Hat tip to Ouriel, who has a more complicated way to do the same thing via Twitterfeed).
SnapTweet (http://snaptweet.com) has been providing a similar service for a while now, but notably, provides automated tag-based posting.
I am suprised it took them so long, I always figured the twitpic or twitvideo sharing service would one day be crushed by the Youtube/Flickr’s…
Once they see the value of it, the little guys don’t stand a chance in this market.
Fantastic, about time Flickr started offering this.
Poor TwitPic, their service isn’t so special that they can win the fight agains flickr over a long time.
interesting.
Nice to see Flickr finally getting on-board. There are services that have been out, such as twitterfeed, that allow you to post your Flickr RSS feed. You upload a photo just like any other photo, set the privacy setting (public or private), and the RSS feed will tweet your photos.
A link? You’re excited because this enables more linking? What kind of “instant response” are you getting — yawns? Call me when you can embed actual photos in a tweet.
How long till photo sharing will be integrated into Twitters own system?
Took them long enough.
I always wondered why they didn’t jump in from the beginning, especially since they already have tons of ways of posting. iPhone is their top camera phone upload for * sake. Twitpic didn’t need to exist.
I’ve been doing this for years via Dave Winer’s twittergram: http://flickr.twittergram.com/.
I wouldn’t mind cutting out the middle man and going straight from flickr to twitter, but the functionality is nothing new.
Hopefully a sign of more to come from flickr, though.
You can also use the blog this feature for any content that you’ve uploaded.
Just use Mobypicture and reach all your friends on all your social sites, also of course on Flickr….
I’ve been using BrightKite for awhile now and you can set it up so that when you email a pic from your phone to it, the pic is automatically uploaded to Flickr and Facebook with a link to the image on Twitter.
But this could be cool too. Brightkite just seems to be the whole package.
Not *just* for email uploads.
You can post *any* photo to your Twitter stream (not just your photos, either) by clicking the “Blog This” button above a photo.
Basically, your it treats your Twitter just as it would any other blog.
Merck is testing twitsick, with antiemetic integration to prevent twitcrunch upchucks.
It’s also likely to be more reliable and less likely to fold and to lose all your photos. OAuth as well, a trivial option to install but still not done by the upstarts. I hear the Beta claims but it’s more likely down to lack of resource
Thanks for the write up.
As Josh noted you can use the “Blog This” button from the “Share This” menu or above the photo for any photo on the site that you have permission to blog. (the Commons is getting tweeted to high heaven already)
Also, I haven’t worked at Twitter since it was still primarily a podcasting startup
As long as this is faster than Twitpic, I am totally on board.
awesomeness!
Just get a free http://www.pikchur.com/ account and you enter your Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, etc details.
Pikchur sends your photo to all of the services without having to do the “add “2twitter” at the end of your special email address before the @ sign”
I like how they use a large image size and large resolution. See one of my photos here:
http://www.pikchur.com/aAT
@SocialJulio
Expono.com has already launched this possibility.
Flickr are late with this!
Kellan works at Flickr not Twitter. He did some consulting a long time ago on odeo and then in the early days of twitter, but he’s a flickr employee.
Use mobypicture.com instead of Flickr and have Flickr integration. Twitter-messaging and tons of other social services by just mailing to one site: Mobypicture.com