Twitter's face off with the popular photo app Instagram has been in the news for a while now. According to several reports being circulated in the tech space, Twitter is preparing an Instagram killer and might introduce its own photo filters before the end of this year.
After Facebook-owned Instagram chose not to allow users view photos on Twitter, the microblogging service began working on a product that can add a variety of photo filters to its official app and with this Twitter will officially get into the photo-filter business.
Citing unnamed sources, All Things Digital reported that Twitter plans to release the camera filters in an application update in time for the holiday season. Using the app which is currently in the testing phase, several Twitter employees and the company chairman Jack Dorsey himself shared many black-and-white filtered photos in the social media. Twitter is believed to be testing the new version of the app for iOS and Android now. The Next Web published several tweets from twitter employees (a selected few) including Twitter Product Manager Sara Mauskopf showing off telltale photos suggesting that they are testing a beta release of its iOS and Android apps. The photos largely share the same square dimensions (1024 x 1024px), whereas photos shared through Instagram are a mere 612 x 612px, the report said.
If the reports are to be believed, this move will be the latest salvo in the escalating "photo war" between Twitter and Instagram after the latter deactivated Twitter Card integration last week, which ultimately resulted in Instagram photos showing up poorly cropped in tweets.
The New York Times was the first to report rumors of Twitter's photo-filtering initiative last month. "In the coming months, Twitter plans to update its mobile applications to introduce filters for photos that will allow people to share altered images on Twitter and bypass Instagram, the popular mobilecentric photo-sharing network, according to people who work at the company but asked not to be named as they are not allowed to discuss unannounced projects," the report said.
