We were introduced to Pixable earlier this year, a site that ingeniously capitalizes on the overwhelming slew of photo-sharing platforms out there. The whole idea revolves around minimizing the time you spend bouncing from site to site, checking out your friends’ photos. Instead, they are all aggregated by Pixable, which shows you (via mobile app or Web) the best of Facebook, Flickr, and Instagram.
Now that list is going to become much more complete. Today, Pixable has announced it will begin integrating Twitter images as well as videos. The application will begin pulling from Twitter’s new native photo client as well as photos posted to the stream from TwitPic, yFrog, Lockerz, and more.
This seems to utilize Pixable’s technology more than its pervious site integrations have: Viewing photos on Facebook or Flickr isn’t exactly aggravating. No one wants to frequent multiple sites and sift through days’ worth of photos, but it’s not exactly difficult. But with Twitter, it is. The real-time updating and constantly moving stream on the site makes it impossible to catch every photo. But Pixable grabs it all, including links to photos and videos. CEO and co-founder Inaki Berenguer explained to us that unlike Twitter’s new galleries, Pixable displays the photo timeline of your Twitter stream, not just of an individual.
He also expects to see a different array of images from Twitter than from Facebook. “There is a very different social graph on Facebook. It’s usually your direct friends. On Twitter, you follow influential people, not necessarily close friends. It’s a different type of network, and you can see them both on Pixable.”
Timing is also a factor. He mentions how Facebook users might go to an event, and upload photos from it a week later. With Twitter, you post immediately.
The social networking revolution and photo-sharing yield no end to creativity – but it’s also resulting in a lot of fragmentation. You’ve got you Instagram account for artsy iPhone images, Flickr for professional photos, Facebook for party pictures, and Twitter for on the fly image sharing. And Pixable is benefiting from this division.
When asked how he thought third-party photo platforms like TwitPic and yFrog would fair given Twitter’s launch of a native application, Inaki felt they would survive but notes this is exactly what helps Pixable. “It will affect them a little bit but people are used to using those sites. But I don’t know – we’re on the opposite side,” he says. “The more fragmentation, the better for us. Then there are more photos for us to collect.”
