Twitter is rolling out advanced photo search capabilities. The idea is to create a richer search experience within the social networking site itself so users aren’t tempted to go elsewhere to find what they are looking for.
For example, if someone wants to see all the pictures related to “#idol” they can search within Twitter.com and find pictures related to the hashtag.
Along with the latest search updates on Twitter.com, the site is also launching new features for Firefox with Twitter. Using the new version, Internet surfers can type in a hashtag using the “#” sign or an @username into the address bar to go to a search results page or someone’s profile page.
In an official Twitter blog post, co-founder Jack Dorsey adds, “Millions of people share photos on Twitter every day. We’re going to make that easier than ever. Over the next several weeks, we’ll be releasing a feature to upload a photo and attach it to your Tweet right from Twitter.com. And of course, you’ll soon be able to easily do this from all of our official mobile apps. A special thanks to our partner Photobucket for hosting these photos behind the scenes.”
Dorsey also notes that Twitter is working with carriers to allow users to send photos from Twitter via text message from the mobile smartphone client.
This little aside about smartphone updates for the Twitter client is particularly interesting considering the microblogging site has been keen on discouraging third party apps for mobile phones. In fact, Twitter has asked programmers to code software that presents data in a new and interesting way – rather than the traditional list format seen on Twitter.com.
Search has long since made a move towards multimedia as Google already features pictures, video, and location-based relevant search results within its results.
Could Twitter eventually take a cue from Google and inlcude things like video and location-based information? Baby steps…
