Twitter began rolling out its new photo and video sharing service on Wednesday, promising on its blog to users to deliver more relevant searches than ever before. Conducting a search or clicking on a trending topic will not only yield tweets, but relevant photos and videos on the right side of the results page as well.

The social media service has also introduced a version of Mozilla Firefox that allows users to type a “#hashtag” or “@username” directly into the browser’s address bar and they will be redirected to search results.

According to an official Twitter blog post from creator Jack Dorsey, they have plans to release a photo upload feature in conjunction with Photobucket within the next few weeks, and are working with mobile carriers worldwide for users with smartphones to send content via MMS.

This leaves third-party photo hosts like Twitpic, Yfrog and Twitgoo – which have survived with little interference from Twitter itself – wondering what the future holds. While Twitpic has struggled with ambiguity of copyright regulations in the past, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo assured the D9 Conference on Wednesday that users will own the rights to photos they post on Twitter.