Twitter Taking Direct Photo Uploads, Will Create User Media Galleries

Twitter says it’s planning to create “user media galleries” that will house all of the media a user shares on the service — including items uploaded and shared via other services.

The news comes at the same time that Twitter has begun accepting direct photo uploads via the Twitter.com interface. As Mike Cane pointed out, some Twitter users are now seeing a pop-up window on their Twitter home page that introduces the new feature. Here’s how it looks for me:

The “Learn More” link leads to Twitter Help Center page that tells more about the company’s plans for user media galleries:

Are you going to have galleries of my images?

Not at first. But in the coming weeks, we’ll add user media galleries, which will let you see the images a user has shared on Twitter.

When you do have galleries, will they only include images uploaded to Twitter or will other services be included? If so, which ones?

User galleries will include images a user has shared on Twitter, including those uploaded via other services, such as Twitpic, yfrog, and Instagram.

Will all images appear in search?

Unless you have a protected account, there is always a chance that your image will appear in search results.

If I have a protected account, will my images show up in search?

If you have a protected account, your images should never show up in search results.

After being uploaded, photos show up on the pic.twitter.com subdomain and include a “powered by Photobucket” message when embedded in the tweet. Photobucket is hosting the images for Twitter.

The photo upload feature is rolling out to all Twitter users over the next few weeks, according to that Twitter help page I mentioned earlier. The user media galleries are said to be on the way “in the coming weeks.”

When the galleries launch, it should make the experience of searching for images on Twitter a lot easier — at least your own images, if not those of other users, too. Personally speaking, I’ve been inconsistent in using the various third party photo services that connect to Twitter clients. On my laptop, I think I have Tweetdeck set to use Yfrog.com — but on my main home computer, I use twitpic.com. In other scenarios, I’ve uploaded photos to Mobypicture.com, too. Finding my own old images isn’t easy. I’m hoping that the user galleries solves that problem.