Nick Bilton: ‘Twitter to Add Photo Filters to Compete With Instagram’

Nick Bilton:

In the coming months, Twitter plans to update its mobile applications to introduce filters for photos that will allow people to share altered images on Twitter and bypass Instagram, the popular mobile-centric photo-sharing network, according to people who work at the company but asked not to be named as they are not allowed to discuss unannounced projects.

Is this a good idea? I think not, but can’t explain why.

Update: I think what bothers me about this is the focus on filters. If Twitter wanted to make it easier to post photos as tweets, and improve the presentation of inline photos in your tweet stream, that I could see. But adding filters to the Twitter mobile apps seems like a complete distraction, a sign that they’ve been afflicted with everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-itis.

(I also think there’s a market for a killer iPhone photo filtering app: something less focused on retro faux-analog gimmicks and more focused on the sort of one-touch improvements you can make in desktop apps like Lightroom and Aperture. There are a slew of pretty good apps for the iPhone that let you make such improvements to your photos, but I still haven’t seen one that’s truly great — combining a convenient fast workflow with aesthetically superior filters.)

★ Sunday, 4 November 2012