Twitpic to shut down after failing to find an acquirer

Twitpic to shut down after failing to find an acquirer

Josh Constine

TechCrunch

The reports of Twitpic’s survival were greatly exaggerated.
Despite claiming it had found an acquirer to save it from death following a trademark complaint from Twitter, the photo sharing service today announced that didn’t happen and it’s game over on October 25th.

Users can now export their photos until the 25th, at which point they’ll vanish into the void.
Twitpic founder Noah Everett wrote on its blog that:
“It’s with a heavy heart that I announce again that Twitpic will be shutting down on October 25th. We worked through a handful of potential acquirers and exhausted all potential options. We were almost certain we had found a new home for Twitpic (hence our previous tweet), but agreeable terms could not be met. Normally we wouldn’t announce something like that prematurely but we were hoping to let our users know as soon as possible that Twitpic was living on.”

Twitpic’s export tool will let users salvage their memories, or at least their last 5000 uploaded photos. Scrolling through your earliest Twitpics will probably make you nostalgic / ashamed.
The tool is running behind, presumably due to demand, so you’ll have to click to get in line and then come back to your settings page to get your export download link.

Twitpic initially announced on September 4th that it would shut down. But then two weeks later it tweeted that someone was buying it and it would continue to operate
Today’s announcement is a major backtrack that’s sure to come as a disappointment to loyal users who’s hoped were raised then dashed. Twitpic started as one of the only ways to share photos on Twitter, allowing users to upload pics and get a URL they could post. It filled the permalinked photo pages with ads to But then in mid-2011, Twitter revealed it would launch its own photo-hosting service, making Twitpic largely unnecessary.

Twitpic and its competitors were quickly ecclipsed by Twitter’s native option. Yfrog pivoted to become a social network, but Twitpic signed its own death certificate by sticking to its original product.

The end began a few months ago when Twitter threatened legal action for infringing on its trademark. Everett explained “Twitter contacted our legal demanding that we abandon our trademark application or risk losing access to their API. Rather that fight a costly legal battle against a much deeper-pocketed opponent, Everett decided to throw in the towel. It looked like it would get a second wind thanks to an acquirer, but that didn’t happen. Now the bell has run, the fight’s over, and it’s just nine days until the battered Twitpic stumbles out of the ring.