This is not a happy news for you if you happen to be someone in photo sharing business on Twitter. Until very recently, services like Twitpic and Yfrog were the preferred means of sharing images on Twitter. In fact, just a few months ago, (March to be precise) the likes of Twitpic and Yfrog led the charts when it came to market share with 45.7% and 29.3% of the market respectively.
However, ever since Twitter came up with their own photo sharing service, both these services have seen a significant drop in their market share – to the extent that Twitter’s own service which it launched in collaboration with Photobucket now leads the pack. That’s a spectacular change in just 5 months.
According to data from photo search engine Skylines, Twitters own photo sharing service now leads the pack with 36% of the market share Twitpic, the erstwhile leader is down to 30% while Yfrog has moved down to just 21%.
Things started going downhill for services like these since March after Twitter decided to bar straight forward clients from the business. Twitpic also said that it was surprised by Twitter’s move and that Twitter had not informed them about their impending entry in to what was essentially their turf not very long ago.
That said, it seems that the rise of Twitters own image sharing service is mainly due to the “Gallery” service that Twitter introduced. Using this, Twitter users can browse all their posted photos, even the ones they commented upon in one single location – even if they are hosted on different services. This resulted in users posting images on Twitpic- but still being able to see it in Twitter gallery.
This eventually led to thinking that it doesn’t matter where your pics are stores since you get to see them in the gallery anyway.
That said, individual popularity of third party services still remain high. Android users for example, seem to still use Twitpic as their main photo sharing service. The rise of Twitters own service seems to be mainly because if iOS users using Twitter for iPhone client for sharing images.
Anyway, if you happen to be a Twitter user and share pictures a lot, has your sharing habit changed over the past few months?
[Via Techcrunch]
