How A Tweet Is Worth More Than 140 Characters

ByAndrea Rickett

As it stands now, Twitter does not have a built in way to upload pictures or videos as tweets. That means if you want to tweet a picture of your new baby, fuzzy kittens, or anything that is utterly adorable, you need to include links in your tweets to get the job done. These links would likely direct you to Twitpic, or Yfrog, the most popular used photo sharing third party mediums for tweets.

These third party sites rack in millions of dollars of revenue by selling advertising on the image pages that are distributed by tweeted links. It looks like Twitter is moving towards a more commercialized model as it is poised to take a big chunk of those ad dollars by doing things in-house.

As announced at D9, Twitter is about to launch its new photo sharing features to the Twittersphere. This service will look to make the media sharing experience easier for everyone.

So, what can you expect from the new feature? It will come alongside a revamp version of Twitter’s search function which will now include photos and videos. Here is a preview of what it may look like.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx2DxV5698Q[/youtube]

Twitter is smartly partnering with Photobucket to host these photos. Does this mean that now you need a Photobucket account? Nope, if you don’t have a photobucket account you can still use the service and those images will only be visible on Twitter. It will still be Twitter’s term of service that you would have to comply with, not Photobucket’s.

Does this mean that the likes of Twitpic and Yfrog will become obsolete? Not necessary, Twitter veterans will most likely still do the old fashioned way for a while to come. Let’s not all forget that Twitter’s servers have gone down before and that was just 140 characters worth of text. Furthermore, people have viewed this move as a stab in the back for these third party developers who made Twitter the powerhouse that it is today, but on the other hand it is the logical next step for Twitter to take.

Let us know what you think about having photo and video sharing built into Twitter itself. Do you think it will be a big difference for you? No difference?