How to post images to Twitter and Flickr at the same time from an iPhone

Sweet - TwitPic + http://flick.com/photos/solyoung works great from the iPhone.

How to is after the jump

With all the web services and photo sharing systems, I’m amazed an integration of Flickr and Twitter hasn’t already happened. Twitxr came out and claimed compatibility in Dave Winer’s scripting.com comments, but it never actually worked. I’ve wanted a way to post a pic to Flickr and have it announced on Twitter right away. Nada.

I love to shoot pics on my iPhone and post them immediately. Live photo streams are terrific! Flickr makes it easy by allowing you send to an email to a pre-defined email address. All you do is send an email with a photo as an attachment to your Flickr upload email address.

Now TwitPic is offering a service for Twitter users just like Flickr’s service, but they store the photo and send an announcement to Twitter with a link. Whatever you put in the subject line of the email is set as your update in Twitter.

Combining these two services is easy. Just send an email to both services at the same time and the pic will be posted in both places. The subject line of the email will be set as your update in Twitter and as the title of the pic in Flickr.

If the above didn’t already give you the ‘Ah HA!’ feeling, here are the precise instructions (iPhone specific, but works with any email capable phone):

  1. Set up Flickr so you can send email to your account. Do this by visiting http://flickr.com/account -> “Email”.
  2. Save your Flickr upload email address to your address book. I named this contact “Flickr”.
  3. Set up TwitPic so you can send email to your account. TwitPic uses your pre-existing Twitter account credentials for authentication (smart!). Do this by visiting http://twitpic.com -> “Log-in” -> “Settings”.
  4. Save your TwitPic upload email address to your address book. I named this contact “TwitPic”.
  5. SendPics (iPhone Jailbreak Specific): I recommend using SendPics to send full-rez images to Flickr, but the default photos iPhone app works good too.
  6. Address the email, with pic attached, to your Flickr and TwitPic contacts, placing both contacts in the ‘To’ field.
  7. Enter your Twitter update in the Subject line. This also becomes the Title of the image on Flickr.
  8. Enter any additional tags and a description in the body of the email. This only applies to Flickr.

15 thoughts on “How to post images to Twitter and Flickr at the same time from an iPhone

  1. SnapTweet is a service which combines Flickr and Twitter. It allows auto-posting via Flickr tag or via direct message to @snaptweet. It doesn't try to create another photo store or a new friend network, it just hooks up two services that we all love.

    Please give it a go sometime. Thanks.

  2. It seems very much like snaptweet, but works via a # in the title. That
    probably makes it easier than adding “tags:” to the body of a mobile phone's
    email. The only problem I have with it is that it doesn't post to my
    photostream, but rather to its own.

    Definitely a Twitter account worth following.

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