Twitter looking to roll out photo filters by year’s end

Back in November, The New York Times reported that Twitter was looking to add Instagram-like photo filters to its official web and mobile clients. The move would allow, if not encourage, users to bypass the popular photo-sharing service.

Today comes a follow-up report from Mike Isaac over at AllThingsD, who says that Twitter is indeed working on adding photo filters to its service, a it’s hoping to release them via an application update in time for the holiday season…

From the AllThingsD report:

“Twitter is making a big push to release a series of photo filters to be used inside the official Twitter app before the end of the year, according to sources familiar with the matter…

…Why push it out before the new year? Perhaps Twitter wants a cut of the inevitable jump in photos we’ll see as everyone goes home for the holidays. Instagram, for instance, saw more than 200 Thanksgiving-related photos posted to its service every second on Thanksgiving Day alone, and ten million Thanksgiving photos posted overall that day.”

Issac says that the new version of the app is currently in testing, which more than likely has something to do with why Twitter chairman and co-founder Jack Dorsey’s Twitter page has recently seen an increase in black-and-white filtered photos.

And we’ve seen further evidence over the past few months suggesting that Twitter is looking to bump up its photo services. In its most recent app update, it tweaked the Discover tab feature to move photos to the top of user search results.

As you can imagine, Instagram isn’t too happy about Twitter’s new interest in photo sharing. The two have been at odds for quite some time now, and in the latest shot, Instagram pulled support for Twitter’s in-tweet embedding feature.

It’ll be interesting to watch this feud play out. And with Christmas only a few weeks away, we should be seeing Twitter’s new photo filters anytime now. We’ll let you know as soon as we hear any further details.

What do you think about Twitter adding photo filters? Good idea, bad idea?