Twitter launching photo service (opens in new tab)

This would have been a savvy move from Twitter about say, 4 years ago when it was clear people were going to be sharing a lot of images.

As regards developers, their message is to not build "client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience". However, the mainstream Twitter client experience may at any time be expanded to include whatever you're doing already. That's always a danger when building on someone else's API like this, but the 'inflection point' comes when a company actually starts replacing 3rd party developers' tools with official products.

That should help developers decide what to do next... In my case, it's more clear that I don't want to have anything to do with the Twitter API.

Twitter has made their nut as the collective tissue of the social web. Sure the tweets are actual content, but they're always about something external -- twitter is most often used for seeing what people have to say and share about something else. If they move into photos that's a move into primary content, it means they're no longer just dealing with hosting the connective tissue - photos, videos, blogs are the meat. I dont have any conclusion to draw from there, because im conflicted. Philosophically that really bugs me, but practically I'll probably use it.

this is pretty interesting. I wonder what would happen to the twitpics and yfrogs of the world...

I hope they do. For normal people, photo sharing is probably more important than link sharing. And, with photo sharing delegated to random third parties, Twitter users are left at the mercy of companies like Twitpic who will license their photos to agencies.

I don't mean to be a negative Nancy here, but Twitter's direction in the past year has been anything but elegant.

Many of these features should have been done a long time ago, instead of letting an eco system grow as deeply as it did, knowing full well that any opportunity to monetize the platform would involve cannibalizing developers and creating resentment.

Having said all that, I'm looking forward to these changes as it will definitely create a more cohesive user experience.

In theory this is an ideal move for a company like Twitter. They are more and more going the route of Media company.

However what is not cool is the way in which these directions have been taken and the path chosen over the past year or so.

So yes great move for Twitter, the ecosystem and millions of users but somewhere this is getting ugly for companies that were solving this purpose for over 4 years when Twitter did not feel it necessary to do so for "users".

After the uncertainty and FUD TwitPic created in the minds of a lot of people, I think this decision is going to receive a lot less backlash than it originally would.

Personally, though, I still don't like how they are pushing out third-party developers, but I see some understandable motives for the decision.

  warning the ecosystem to stay away from building “client apps that mimic
  or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience.” 

That might be what they're saying, but what I'm hearing is stay away from any Twitter integration.

How are they going to monetize this? I'd love to see them buy http://pikchur.com (disclaimer: founders are very good friends of mine)