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What to watch for in Twitter's photo-sharing feature
By Dave Winer on Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 11:45 AM.

Pictures in Twitter should be easy. On an iPhone, there should be camera functionality built into the Twitter app.  #

The steps to publish a photo should be as follows: #

1. Take the picture. #

2. Enter a title. #

3. Click OK. #

The should demo this, and everyone should be impressed if it makes it into their mobile apps. #

A picture named buddha.gifI also expect this to be heavily silo'd. That there will not be a way to do this through the API. So we'll still be stuck including the URLs in the tweets, and under pressure from other Twitter users to give it up and use Twitter's client. This will be a battle akin to the argument over retweeting. Many if not most users preferring the old metadata-less way, to the new system-friendly way (I prefer the latter myself). But I think in this case the pressure will be the other way -- to use the Twitter, Inc method of photo-sharing with hidden URLs and fatter tweets. #

If Flickr were paying attention, they'd be have a timeline and allow you to follow photo-rivers on other services. And keep it wide open via the API, which works pretty well. Instead their home page is a disorganized mess. By going into pictures, Twitter gives Flickr one last shot at remaining more than an archive of the photography we were doing in the last decade. And not so much a big part of the way we do it in the future. #

I'm sure I'll think of more questions that are likely to be resolved with Twitter's announcement, and things to ask about and think about.  #




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