14 DAY TRIAL // Flickr has officially launched a complete Twitter integration allowing users to easily share their Flickr photos through the micro-blogging service. The feature was actually implemented earlier in the month as a beta but now the photo sharing site is ready to make it available to the general public.
“We’ve launched our Flickr2Twitter integration,” the post on the Flickr blog said, announcing the new features. “Share your Flickr content either via “upload by email” or feature existing Flickr content in your Twitter stream.”
The new feature allows Flicker users to tweet any photo by using the “Blog This” button already available and then selecting the Twitter option. You can tweet any photo on the site even if it's not your own and there is a 116-character limit accounting for the shortened URL. Flickr also uses its own URL shortener, flic.kr, like the majority of services related to Twitter.
The other new feature allows users to automatically tweet a new photo uploaded to Flickr. Called Flickr2Twitter this feature is only available for email or mobile uploads so its use will be limited. Photos uploaded by other means can be shared on Twitter only manually, using the “Blog This” option or automatically but through other third-party services like FriendFeed.
This is the major issue with the new feature and the reason why it isn't going to replace hugely popular third-party photo sharing services aimed specifically at Twitter users, like Twitpic or yFrog. Still Flikr is very popular service and, for the millions of people using it, the new option may prove quite useful. And there is nothing stopping Flickr from adding auto-tweets in the future if it believes the feature will be requested enough.