Twitter to Add Instagram-like Photo Filters to its Mobile Apps

Twitter is planning to update its mobile apps to introduce filters for photos and allow users to share altered, stylized images – much like the Facebook-owned Instagram.

Users increasingly access Twitter via mobile devices. Considering the success of Twitter on mobile devices, this new feature will be a grist to the mill by helping  mobile users to share photos more easily without having to download an extra app.

Filters being a big part of Instagram’s success, Twitter hopes to give a serious challenge to its rival the Instagram.

According to one Twitter employee,

The company's V.I.T.'s, or Very Important Tweeters, as they are known internally, usually celebrities and media personalities, would be especially happy to see filters in the Twitter mobile apps

Most V.I.T.'s now use Instagram to take photos, and then share them on Twitter, where they often have a larger following.

The New York Times wrote.

Although Twitter considered a photocentric product acquisition for some time, but the move to build its own filters was hastened after Facebook Officially Welcomed Instagram.

According to the report, Twitter executives explored buying a competing photo service or application. Jack Dorsey, the company’s co-founder and executive chairman, and Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief executive, both led the search. After meeting with and appraising some companies like camera+ , Twitter’s executives decided the price tags were not worth the goods and decided that Twitter could build its own filters instead.

Although Twitter signed a deal with the photo-storage site Photobucket in June, the company has since started storing images on its own servers.

With the huge user base of twitter and mobile media consumption on the rise, this would potentially be a very big move for Twitter. It also goes to show that more and more social networks are focussing towards photo sharing.