Twitter upgrades search, announces partnership with Photobucket

Twitter June 1, 2011 1 Comment

Twitter are continuing their busy week with the announcement that they are now integrating photos into search results. Just announced on their blog, the new search engine will see improved results for users with functionality such as the ability to display a search page when typing a username if you use Firefox with Twitter. But the most significant announcement is that they have partnered with Photobucket to allow users to attach a photos to a tweet, as well as seeing them displayed in search results. The video below shows some of their changes in action :


Photobucket CEO Tom Munro commented on the move by saying : “Photobucket is the category leader with regard to reliability, size, offerings and scalability, and we are ready and able to best serve the growing number of Twitter users. Photobucket extends and enriches the Twitter experience, and we look forward to building on this collaboration with Twitter to better serve the needs of our joint audiences. This partnership is just one example of how companies can easily build upon the Photobucket platform to extend their brand vision and product offerings.” While some may be questioning Twitter’s partnership decision here, for Photobucket this is clearly a good thing.

What does this mean for photo sharing apps?

Photo sharing on Twitter is certainly nothing new, thanks to the likes of YFrog and Twitpic. What is new is Twitter embracing this so readily themselves, which could severely impact both players within the Twitter experience and outside of it. You would have to wonder at the likelihood of a service like Twitpic surviving in the wake of this, when now users can simply attach a photo within one click when updating from Twitter itself. But this could also impact other, more niche photo sharing sites as Twitter specifically referenced the fact that you would also be able to upload photos from within their mobile apps, as well as upcoming support to upload pictures via MMS.

Can Instagram and Color survive this integration by Twitter? While they offer a niche service and have already built up their own loyal following, I expect a lot of people will start to use photo sharing on Twitter more from a mobile point of view, as they will make this such an easy part of the experience. This combined with their location option could turn them into a hugely powerful mobile photo sharing service alone, separate from the Twitter experience in itself.

Don’t forget video

As announced on their blog, the improved search functionality will also integrate video results. This is huge and in some ways more significant than the news surrounding photo sharing. Online video is by no means new but is absolutely exploding for brands right now, as more and more companies realise the need to provide their users with entertaining content in engaging formats. That video will be so easily accessible in Twitter search could see more companies investing in this, but also using it slightly differently. Expect to see more companies uploading Tweets with video links that contain short, current messages to capitalise on this new search function and attract more users.

This helps to improve the whole experience of Twitter and make it much more of a multimedia format, which it should really have been a long time ago. The only question is whether all these new features will take away from the simplicity of the site and frustrate users, or whether it sees people invest more and more time on the site? I’m betting on the latter :)

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