If a picture is worth a thousand words, then maybe a TwitPic is worth 140 characters. The good news is that you don’t have to choose between the two. With TwitPic you can do both.
Here’s the scene. You are on vacation. You are nestled in the mountains and witness a glorious sunset. Sure, you could describe it in 140 characters or less. Or you could snap a picture of the scene, email it to TwitPic with a brief message, and have both posted on Twitter in minutes.
Here’s how:
- Make sure your cell phone has a camera. If it doesn’t, you can still post pictures, but it won’t nearly as easy or spontaneous.
- Sign up for a free TwitPic account. It will take you less than two minutes. You just enter your Twitter username and password. When you do, TwitPic will give you a unique TwitPic email address that you will use.
- Create a new entry in your cell phone address book called, “TwitPic.” Enter your new TwitPic email address in the appropriate field. Save the new address. Now the fun begins.
- Take a photo with your cell phone. It can be of anything. A beautiful scene, the food you are eating, the people you are with … whatever.
- Email the photo as an attachment to TwitPic. Since you already entered this into your address book, your unique TwitPic address is already assigned to it.
- Enter any text you want to accompany the picture in the subject line of the email message. Don’t bother entering text in the body of the message. TwitPic will ignore it. Keep your message brief. You only have about 110 characters, since TwitPic will need to include an abbreviated link to the actual picture.
- Send the email. But you will need to be patient. Depending on what else is happening on the Web, it may take a few minutes—sometimes several minutes—for TwitPic to post the picture and send your tweet with the link.
That’s all there is to it. If everything has gone as planned, your followers will see a message like the following:
When they click on the embedded link, they will see the actual picture:
TwitPic is a great and simple way to enhance your tweets. It’s the next best thing to being there.
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What would I do without you Michael? Haha. Thanks.
If you Tweet from your mobile device, check to see if they integrate to TwitPic. For example, I use Tweetie on the iPhone and I can pick any photo I've already taken or take one right then and put my text and the picture, right in the Tweet. I find this very simple too.
Yes, most of the iPhone Twitter application have this built in. If so, it is even simpler than what I described — though it can take some effort to get set up.
Twitpic is nice, but I prefer Skitch or Flickr. Both have email addresses that you can send an image to that will post automagically to Twitter. Skitch has built in Twitter integration. With Flickr, you'll have to set up a Twitterfeed account, but it's nice to post to your main Flickr account and Twitter simultaneously.
BTW, Skitch is *really* pretty, too.
When I entered my Twitter username and password it seemed like nothing happened and that I just went back to their home page. I discovered by clicking on Settings that my account was set up, and I was able to obtain the unique email address that I am to use.
Facebook offers a similar system for uploading photos from your camera phone to your Facebook account.
How will Twitter, TwitPic, etc. monetize these services?
You are asking the $64,000 question. (Or in this economy, maybe it's the $64 billion question.) Personally, I think Twitter should follow the Twitteriffic business model. They insert ads into everyone's feed every 10 tweets or so. If you don't want the ads, then you can subscribe to a premium service that is a nominal monthly amount.
I'm curious how that might work, though. If other apps are also inserting ads, then the ads could get overwhelming in a hurry.
Another great option might be to sell premium tweet-blasts. Similar to an ad, but the advertiser pays per single tweet that's blasted to every twitter user. If I had the money, I'd pay $10k for a tweet that gets read by 2 million people. Of course, these would need to be seldom, tasteful, and relevant.
Either way, Twitter has said that they have $50million+ in the bank and that they're not trying to monetize anytime soon.
You are asking the $64,000 question. (Or in this economy, maybe it's the $64 billion question.) Personally, I think Twitter should follow the Twitteriffic business model. They insert ads into everyone's feed every 10 tweets or so. If you don't want the ads, then you can subscribe to a premium service that is a nominal monthly amount.
Yup. It uses an account-specific email such as "special-code+twitter+public@skitch.com" to post to both. Great for desktop screenshots AND on-the-go photos.
Very helpful. Thank you.
Mike, Thanks for this tip. It worked out for me.
i'm twittering now because of you – and i'm also making my own domain name that will soon be up and running.
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Thanks.Mike.I just learned how to use it.:)
Yes.Great info.I can acctach photo with twitter posts now.Thank you very much.
Aha,I just learned it.thanks.
Good article.Learn more from it.
I have my pic on my account, but how I set it as my pic? Can I do this from my phone??
thank you. bert decker sent your link to me. I just got started with twitter last night. I final got sucked into the vortex.
You can also just use TweetDeck (free for iPhone). There you enter your tweet like normal and just hit the Photo button. It asks if you'd like to use an existing photo or take a new one. I typically take the picture before because trying to take it through the application really makes everything run slowly.
This takes it from a 7 step process to 4 –
1) Take Picture
2) Open Tweet Deck
3) Write Tweet
4) Select Picture through TweetDeck interface
5) Send
So I guess it's five, but it's the same process as regularly tweeting, which is why I like it so much…
TwitPict is another option for iPhone. -AQP
Sorry about the link screw-up there. ^^^
i just went from not knowing how to tweet a photo to tweeting a photo in less than 5 mins. thank you mike!
Here is another contender I found this morning for twitting, URL shortening and blogging with email. http://jejot.com