Twitter wants your lo-fi photos of roast beast and your sepia-toned cans of Who hash. The holiday season is upon us, and Twitter knows that the amount of photos posted to any and all social networks will jump, significantly. And the company wants to make sure that people use Twitter for a fair share of their photo-sharing needs.

All Things D quotes sources familiar with the matter who say that Twitter will launch native photo filtering before the end of 2012. It was first rumored that Twitter was working on a photo filtering product early last month.

It would have always been a smart move for Twitter to develop native photo filtering for its apps. There are a lot of places to share photos on the web, and each service has to keep up with what the people want – and the people want to be able to add filters to their photos. But in light of recent events, it’s even more imperative now that Twitter develop the functionality within its service.

Last week, Instagram gave Twitter a big middle finger by cutting off Twitter cards support. What that does is it makes Instagram photos look pretty terrible when posted to Twitter. While apologizing to users for any confusion the move caused, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom made it clear that they felt it was ““the correct thing for our business to do at this time.”

Of course, your Instagram photos look terrible on Twitter because Instagram wants you to use Instagram. It’s that simple. Every social media company wants you to stay inside their walls – Twitter is no exception. And a good set of photo filters could be a huge boost for Twitter. Although Instagram has added a web presence and is a robust social network in its won right (liking, comments, etc.), Twitter is inarguably the more fully formed network. If it can launch a good product, it could be a nice counter-attack to Instagram’s latest offensive.

UPDATE: Instagram has cut off all ties with Twitter. Instagram photos are no longer available anywhere on Twitter. That makes this photo-filtering initiative even more pressing.

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