Twitter Applications– Hundreds of them exist if not thousands. We all know we want an application to do specific things so we search for something to help us. So, last night I decided I was going to go through a post I wrote last week titled 125 Twitter Applications to Make Using Twitter Easier to Use a
nd start looking for different twitter application that I never used and see if it would enhance my overall twitter experience.
So, I looked through my list and decided that I was going to give TwitPickr a try. It is a twitter application that allows you to transfer your photos from your Twitpic account directly into your flickr account. At first when I started testing this program, I thought it was going to be something I would use regularly as I love taking photos while out & about & could easily transfer them online without needing to go back to my Blackberry later. So after playing with the application for the last day, here are the highlights & low points of this application:
TwitPickr’s Highlights:
I really liked the way it will bring in your photos into your Flickr account quickly. Basically once you click the upload button it will show them in your photo stream on Flickr instantly. There is no waiting for 20 minutes for the photos to process which is nice. I also like the way that it will pull in the photos at a good quality size of 640 x 480 (the max size twitpic compresses the pictures 
to. The other nice feature is that the quality of the photo does not appear to be compressed or diminished either.
Another really nice feature of this Twitter Application is that you can edit the titles of the photo before placing them onto Flickr right on the transfer screen of TwitPickr. This saves me needing to go back after on Flickr & rename them there. That way I can choose the photos I want to send, title them, and upload quickly & effectively with this Photo Sharing Twitter Application.
Concerns with TwitPickr:
While this seems like it could be a really stellar Twitter Application, there are a few components I didn’t care for. The first and biggest issue I had with TwitPickr is that anyone & everyone can snag anybody else’s photos and publish into their Flickr account without even asking. Since it does not require you to log into either your twitpic or twitter account for authorization, you could just type in any twitter ID and grab their photos. With permission, I entered my business partner Jason’s Twitter ID and easily added one of his photos into my Flickr account.
The reason this concerns me is that I may not care to have my photos shared by others & used by them & this is just opening a door for copyright issues. Also, once the photo gets onto Flickr, you can run into some problems with proving who is the rightful owner of the photo. With major concerns over privacy continuing to rise, this throws up big red flags for many consumers and will scare them away from a Twitter Application like TwitPickr. There is a login verification required for the Flickr side at least. My suggestion to fix this component of the TwitPickr Twitter Application? Integrate in some sort of twitter login authorization so that photos cannot be snagged by others so easily.
My second issue with this Twitter Application is that it does not seem to allow you to access your pictures beyond page one of your photos. I searched the entire page looking for the ability to access older photos. I even tried changing the URL to get it to pull older photos with zero luck. So if you are like me & take a lot of pictures when you are at conferences to share through twitpic, you can’t use this Twitter Application to share all the photos on Flickr and will be forced to connect the phone to the computer and do it the old fashioned way. When situations like this arise, it completely defeats the use of this Twitter Application. If the developers can make the ability to share older photos in addition to the most current 20, it would be a major improvement to TwitPickr.
The last thing I noticed was a bug or glitch that sometimes made it difficult to get my photos to load to Flickr. The first few times I used this twitter application it made me repeat a step multiple times. Not sure if it was not connecting with my Flickr Account or if it was timing out the connection or what the issue was. I do know it was frustrating to have to re-title photos over & over when you are 
doing a batch of 10-15 at a time.
Summary of Twitter Application TwitPickr:
While I see this Twitter application really becoming something I could use on a regular basis, I think that before that happens I would need to see some major changes. The biggest concern to me is the lack of privacy control on the twitpic end. This is an issue that needs immediate addressing in my book. The simplicity of TwitPickr is attractive and wonderful for the novice computer user, but the glitches & bugs will keep most away I fear.
Overall, if I were to rate this Twitter Application on a scale of 1-10, I would probably only give it a 4.5. However this score could be majorly increased to a 8 or 9 with just a few minor tweaks to this Twitter application.
If you have any questions about this post or just want to connect, find me on twitter, I am @JB140