One of the most popular and Twitter-friendly image hosting sites around, Twitpic, is dead. Twitpic founder Noah Everett has announced that the service will be shutting down on September 25th.
Why? Apparently, Twitter was threatening legal action.
From the Twitpic blog:
A few weeks ago Twitter contacted our legal demanding that we abandon our trademark application or risk losing access to their API. This came as a shock to us since Twitpic has been around since early 2008, and our trademark application has been in the USPTO since 2009.
Here is some backstory on the history of our trademark:
We originally filed for our trademark in 2009 and our first use in commerce dates back to February 2008 when we launched. We encountered several hurdles and difficulties in getting our trademark approved even though our first use in commerce predated other applications, but we worked through each challenge and in fact had just recently finished the last one. During the “published for opposition” phase of the trademark is when Twitter reached out to our counsel and implied we could be denied access to their API if we did not give up our mark.
Unfortunately we do not have the resources to fend off a large company like Twitter to maintain our mark which we believe whole heartedly is rightfully ours. Therefore, we have decided to shut down Twitpic.
You may have thought that Twitter owned Twitpic, and you wouldn’t have been alone. In reality, Twitpic was always intertwined with Twitter, but existed on its own as an image hosting site a la Flickr. Twitpic and Twitter always played nice, and years ago Twitpic dominated all other image hosting sites for Twitter users.
That all changed in late 2011 when Twitter launched its own photo sharing feature – but Twitpic still retained plenty of traffic, even after Twitter basically pulled the rug out from under all its relied-upon third-party image services.
“On a personal note I want to thank you for letting us be a part of your life and helping you share your experiences over the past 6 years, it’s truly been an honor. I have learned so much through running Twitpic over the years. Through the many mistakes I’ve made and lessons learned, to the bad days and the great days. Thank you again everyone…I will miss and cherish the days of Twitpic we had together,” says Everett.
Thank you everyone who used @Twitpic & allowing me the honor of helping share your experiences. I will miss & cherish our days of Twitpic!
— Noah Everett (@noaheverett) September 4, 2014
You’ll be able to export all of your photos and videos within the next few days.
We’ll update when we hear what Twitter has to say about it.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
