Twitter Preparing To Release New Photo Filters

In an attempt to remain competitive against Instagram, Twitter appears to be preparing to release new photo filters in an application update before the end of this year.

This news comes days after Twitter announced that users were unable to post pictures to Twitter’s “Twitter cards” using Instagram. From Twitter.com, December 5, 2012:

“Users are experiencing issues with viewing Instagram photos on Twitter. Issues include cropped images. This is due to Instagram disabling its Twitter cards integration, and as a result, photos are being displayed using a pre-cards experience. So, when users click on Tweets with an Instagram link, photos appear cropped.”

The competitive nature between the Social Media giants is said to have escalated after Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram earlier this year.

It appears that Twitter employees have been testing the new filters and editing functions. The photos that are being posted through Twitter have a variety of filters applied. Twitter chairman Jack Dorsey has been tweeting several new black-and-white photos that have been catching a lot of attention as well. Although the photos are square, like Instagram photos, they are of a much larger pixel resolution. Instagram photos are 612 x 612px and the photos from the Twitter employees are all 1024 x 1024px.

Twitter has not made any official announcement about the release of the new filters although there have been reports since November that they were working toward offering them. Most recently Twitter revised their “Discover” feature to focus more on photos.

The timing of the release could not be more perfect. Social media sites always experience an increase in picture sharing around the holidays. Instagram reported the sharing of over 200 pictures per second on Thanksgiving.