Money Rail: The Written Word Stumbles as Photo Sharing Tops Link List on Twitter

Now that the whole world is walking around with a digital camera in their pocket, photo sharing is booming. According to Diffbot, photos are the most commonly shared item on Twitter.

Just look at this graph from eMarketer. There’s nothing coming close to images, including articles. Think about it. Twitter already reduces our thoughts to 140 characters, now bit by bit, images are replacing all the words. As a writer, I find that frightening, but I’ll bet the photographers are shouting, it’s about time!

Twitter usage is around 27.7 million right now but eMarketer thinks it will cross 30 million next next year. A nice number, but that’s still only 13% of the population and 16% of all internet users.

Words aren’t the only thing taking a hit, TwitPic, which used to be the preferred tool for sharing photos dropped from more than 50% to only 7% of all links. Instagram and Tumblr have both gained ground in the area of photo sharing.

Though I don’t upload a lot of photos, I too have left TwitPic in favor of Twitter’s own upload tools. I’ve tried and given up on Tumblr. Instagram is still a mystery to me, but I suspect I’ll have to crack into it soon as it rises in popularity.

Look, I’ve got nothing against photos, but I truly believe in the power of the written word. Give a writer a perk today, promote an article on Twitter, then you can go back to sharing photos of what you had for lunch.