Twitter To Users: You Want Filters On Your Photos? We’ll Give You Filters.

(His name is Chico)

(Twitter’s “Gritty” filter)

In the latest news regarding the super passive-aggressive fight, between Twitter and Instagram, Twitter is responding to Instagram’s decision to break itself rather than share their photos easily through Twitter by announcing its own set of fancy, and of course, vintage-y looking photo filters. Oh, you got served via a nice sepia wash! Or something.

In a post on the official Twitter blog, Senior Designer Coleen Baik introduces the eight filters to users. Compared to Instagram’s filters like “Walden” and “Brannan,” these sound like Snow White’s Dwarves — Vignette, Black & White, Warm, Cool, Vintage, Cinematic, Happy and Gritty — but are more “ho, hum” than “hi-ho.”

The post tells its users what taking photos are all about, as if sharing such things on a social network is a brand new world Twitter has just invented.

Take a bird’s-eye view. See how each filter would affect your photo in a single grid view, or swipe through looks to compare your options.

Frame the action. Crop and pinch to zoom in order to focus attention.

Auto-enhance. Make your photos pop with balanced light and colors by tapping the wand.

While we think it was a particularly snippy move by the Facebook-owned Instragram to stop using Twitter cards, this kind of “meh” photo experience (which yours truly went through to produce that “gritty” picture of my cat) seems like a bit of a hasty response, and one that is unlikely to woo any Instagram users away from that product.

It just goes to show that when companies quibble, sometimes their users are the ones who suffer, by way of sub-par experiences. Either you have to just use Instagram to share photos or play with Twitter’s blah filters. Get it together, guys, or you’re going to totally lose us when something more user-friendly and adaptable comes along.

Twitter photos: Put a filter on it [Twitter Blog]

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