Twitter debuted a
shiny new user profile page today and simultaneously launched new versions of its official iOS and Android apps. Much was made of the changes, but lost in the PR blitz is this:
Any Twitter user that posts photos to the service from now on will be doing it via Twitter’s own photo service, not via one of the many third-party providers such as yFrog, Mobypicture or Twitpic.
The option to choose a photo service is now missing in the settings on Twitter’s mobile apps. Users can still choose a video hosting service (for how long, one has to wonder) and a read later service, but the photo service chooser is gone.
This isn’t unexpected, of course. Reports surfaced over the weekend that Twitter was about to ditch third-party image services. Twitter launched its own photo service in August 2011 via a partnership with Photobucket, which does the image hosting.
As I wrote yesterday, this is Twitter’s latest step toward controlling the user experience, particularly around the display of tweets. In this case, dropping support for third-party photo services means users will stay on Twitter itself when viewing photos in the future — those added page views are no doubt also added opportunities for advertising.
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