As Instagram becomes a more used and loved service, many mobile users are starting to take more photos and send less tweets. Even with the traffic on mobile devices increasing every day, Twitter still notices Instagram as a threat to their longevity and making a feature to rival Instagram would promote Twitter’s service.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey may have shown that the service could be launching a photo-filter service for their photos, as Instagram does. He uploaded a few black and white photos onto Twitter, with the link going to the websites own photo service, meaning that Twitter would have had to have these filters or the photo was already in black and white.
Many tech and non-tech webpages have reported on the escalating war between the two companies, even though they are not directly competing in service. Twitter is a small microblog, while Instagram is a photo sharing service. It seems as the two big companies try to take the mobile space, they have crossed paths.
We are seeing huge traffic on Instagram in times of celebration, with Thanksgiving Day playing host to more than ten million Instagram photos. People want to share their experience with photos, as well as text. Instagram offers both, while Twitter offers a service for blogging.
What we do not understand is Twitter’s angle, if they are to launch this photo-filtering feature, it will not necessarily make Twitter a full photo company. Users love Instagram because photos are the center of all that the service provides, while with Twitter, photos are just another feature.
While we may see people upload their photos on Twitter as well as Instagram, we doubt that people will stop using Instagram when they unveil this feature. That is unless deep integration between the photo and text service happens, making photos a more prominent feature on Twitter.