Courtesy of Benzinga.
Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) has never been particularly threatened by Twitter’s presence. The return of Jack Dorsey in addition to Dick Costolo as CEO and Adam Bain as Head of Revenue, which was interpreted as Twitter getting ‘serious’, didn’t change Facebook’s position.
As the mobile platforms gained popularity, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg went ahead to purchase Instagram – a deal which was originally valued at $1 billion but closed at $715 million – amid reports that Jack Dorsey had been in acquisition talks with Instagram founder, Kevin Systrom.
Twitter has now announced ambitious plans to unveil its photo product “in months to come,” to compete with Facebook’s Instagram, which they reveal will use filters. Twitter employees who spoke to press on conditions of anonymity stated that the filters will appeal greatly to the VIPs on Twitter (popularly referred to as VITs or Very Important Tweeters), such as media personalities, celebrities and other personalities that command a large following.
Unconfirmed reports indicate that Twitter has planned to have have users directly uploading video content while bypassing third party services, such as Google (NASDAQ: GOOG)’s YouTube.
As Twitter continues to develop tools to assert its presence in the social media realm and move past the micro blogging utility tag, Systrom downplayed its efforts while at a tech conference on Monday saying, “Instagram is a community, not a filters app.”
Systrom and Dorsey had once been very close as the former worked as an intern for the latter.
While specifics about the photo-sharing tool remain unclear, it is obvious that the app will go beyond filters. Twitter die hards might see this as a comeback to Facebook Director Peter Thiel’s remarks, who once said that if you threw a bomb into Twitter headquarters at 6:00 p.m., no one would get injured because everyone would have already gone home for the day.
Implementation of the project will greatly determine its uptake in the competitive iOS and Android market. Photo-sharing apps such as Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO)’s Flickr have been around for a while now, but remain forgotten.
