Not long ago we reported that Twitter had planned to roll out its own photo filtering service by the end of the year. This has been confirmed by Twitter as of Monday.
Things have been rocky between Instagram and Twitter ever since Facebook acquired the photo sharing service, for approximately $1 billion in cash and stock, in April 2012. Instagram first cut support for Twitter cards last Wednesday, and has fully disabled photo integration with Twitter on December 9, 2012:
“While tweeting links to Instagram photos is still possible, you can no longer view the photos on Twitter, as was previously the case,” Twitter announced.
To make up for the “loss,” the company partnered with Aviary, to enable tweeters to edit and refine their photos, right from Twitter. The update is already available in Google Play and the App Store. This replaces similar features provided in the past by Instagram, but it doesn’t make things better between the two companies.
Twitter’s solution is similar to Instagram, offering eight filters, ranging from black & white to vintage, that will allow Twitter users to add a new look and feel to their photos without needing third party apps. Like Instagram, Twitter photos can be previewed in a single grid, or individually, to see how each filter would affect an image. Other important features include crop and pinch to zoom, and auto-enhance.
Instagram didn’t wait long to fight back. The response came the same day, coinciding with the launch of Twitter Photos.
Instagram, which didn’t have a black-and-white filter, released an app update Monday, which adds Willow – a monochrome filter with subtle purple tones and a translucent glowing white borders – to the features.
The app now comes with a fresher look, improved camera roll image selector (iPhone 5 only) for quick access; optional grid guide for live photos and a permanent grid guide for the scale & crop screen; improved tilt-shift; infinite scroll on user profiles and other grid views; and even a Foursquare button on location pages that opens the Foursquare application, or mobile website, with details about the venue.
