Twitter won’t copy Facebook in buying photo-sharing app

When Facebook acquired Instagram for US$1-billion, some felt that Twitter had missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime. Despite this, the social network says it isn’t about to go shopping for a photo-sharing app of its own.

That people felt Twitter had missed out is hardly surprising when you consider the fact that the company had looked into buying Instagram in 2011 and that co-founder Jack Dorsey had invested US$1-million of his own money into the photo-sharing service.

CEO Dick Costolo said it would be a mistake for Twitter — and any other company for that matter — to try to match Facebook step for step:

“I think that sometimes there is a tendency for companies to react to events in the marketplace that are inconsistent with their strategy….and I think that tendency is a mistake.”

According to The Wall Street Journal, Costolo compared the rush on photo-sharing apps to the reaction of Google’s rivals when it bought YouTube for US$1.6-billion in 2006:

“You can look at all sorts of other similar cases in the past when an event like this happens and people try to react to it. Copying it is never a good idea, at least history would say it’s not a good idea,” he said.

The Twitter CEO said the company would instead be focussing on strengthening its API so other companies could build their products into Twitter.

“We will make sure that we execute on the strategy that we have and not one that’s been laid down for us based on events that happen in the marketplace,” he said.

There are already a large number of products that make use of the social network’s API, but it is focussed on making Twitter a more mainstream communication service used across the web.