Twitter is planning to introduce Instagram-like photo filters to its suite of mobile apps in the “coming months” that will allow users, and more importantly brands, tweet stylised images directly to the service and bypass Instagram.
Instagram is a hugely popular mobile app that allows users to apply old-style filters, and various others, to images that are then shared, mostly automatically, on Twitter – over five billion images have been shared to date.
Facebook recently closed a deal to acquire Instagram for $715 million. At first that may seem overpriced, but when 54% of top brands are using Instagram to market their products to the masses it begins to make business sense. It seems Twitter wants to replicate this, and perhaps hurt Facebook and Instagram in the process.
The addition of photo filters to Twitter’s mobile apps has not yet been officially confirmed by the company.
It’s reported that Twitter, upon hearing about Facebook’s planned acquisition of Instagram back in April, went searching for a competing photo service to purchase. Apparently the company has now decided to develop its own solution instead.
Why brands and normal users want to apply pointless filters to images in the first place is another question? If Twitter does introduce photo filters it’ll be interesting move. It could also pave the way for Twitter allowing direct video upload, bypassing YouTube and other third-party video services.