Apps such as Twitpic, Twitgoo and Yfrog have long been employed by users wishing to show images to their Twitter followers. In fact, Twitter even started supporting in-stream photo viewing with the revamping of Twitter.com.
But with Twitter’s soon-to-roll-out service, which will allow users to upload photos directly to Twitter via the official web and mobile apps, third-party services are being cut out of the picture.
A Twitter rep said in an email to Mashable, “We're still supporting other third-party photo services in our mobile and desktop clients, so users can choose the one that works best for them.”
Although Twitter isn’t immediately revoking API access or support for these apps, it is entering into an entirely new field of competition . And the Twitpic and Yfrog devs certainly didn’t expect they’d be competing with Twitter.
We spoke with Twitpic founder Noah Everett Wednesday via email. “We had no idea Twitter was building a photo feature. Communication between developers and Twitter has never been very clear and the relationships between Twitter and its developers has changed a lot since the Chirp conference last year,” he said. “A more clear feature roadmap and better communication would have been much appreciated by all their developers.”
Twitter’s Turning Point
Everett refers to a turning point in the Twitter/third-party dev relationship about a year ago. Until spring 2010, Twitter apps built with Twitter APIs had been allowed to flourish with little interference and no competition from Twitter.
But at Chirp, the company’s first developer conference, Twitter announced it had acquired Tweetie, a popular iPhone client from dev shop Atebits....
