I just sent my first tweet with Twitter’s new integrated photo sharing feature. I was one of the lucky ones to get early access today to the new feature. 
The feature seems pretty straightforward. If you click on the message box there is a little camera icon right below it and you just click that to add a photo. You can then attach a photo and send it to your Twitter. So easy, even a Congressman could use it.
The first photo I tried didn’t take, because it only supports photos 3MB or smaller. It’s not really meant to be a replacement for Flickr or anything in that regard (Flickr allows photos up to 20MB in size — and some more forward thinking photosharing sites like 500px actually allow photos up to 30MB in size, time to step up your game Flickr) — but with most phone photos being smaller then 3MB, this shouldn’t really be a problem for mobile uploads.
The second photo I tried sending was a smaller one that I’d taken with my phone (pictured above) and it worked just fine.
I was impressed with the speed at which the photo had uploaded to Twitter. In the past I’d had problems with twitpic hanging on me when trying to upload, but the photo to Twitter’s own service was fast and flawless.
The photos are hosted at photobucket, but you don’t have to have a photobucket account to use the service.
I updated my Android Twitter app on my Samsung (piece of crap) phone to the most current version, but when I clicked on add a photo using that it still sent the photo to twitpic, not to to the new twitter service — so I don’t know if the new service supports the Android app yet — I don’t think it does.
Supposedly the new Twitter photo service is integrated with the new IOS5 on the iPhone though — which I suppose will be one more reason to ditch my horrible piece of crap Samsung phone and go back to the iPhone when the new ones come out this Summer or Fall — although I’m sure Twitter probably plans on integrating the photo sharing feature into their Android app too at some point in the future.
I also tried downloading “Snapbucket” to my Android phone (which was the app that the photobucket promo page suggested). I was able to get the app installed (you have to set up a photobucket account) and tried to send a photo to Twitter with it, but it seemed to take a long time. I sent the photo to photobucket (and it’s in my account) about ten minutes ago, but I told it to send it to Twitter and it’s not posted to twitter yet for me. I’ll probably still continue using mobypicture to share mobile phone shots directly until either Twitter updates their Android App or I move over to the iPhone.
One thing that is nice about this new Twitter photo sharing service, is that like all of your text tweets, the photos that you upload to it belong 100% to you. This is in stark contrast to the sleazy move by Twitpic to try to try and actually sell people’s Twitpic photos (keeping 100% of the money for themselves and giving the photographers 0%). There’s a certain sense of satisfaction that comes with knowing that this new photo sharing service by Twitter is going to end up putting Twitpic and their sleazy photographer rip offs out of commission.
Overall I’d say the new service is a win for Twitter. It simple, easy to use, and most importantly FAST! Nice work Twitter! This new service is just what I need to upload all those awesome new shots of my buffed out totally waxed new body.
More on the new service from TechCrunch here.
Thomas Hawk Digital Connection
