Twitter forcing Twitpic to shut down
Big news overnight from Twitpic, the original Twitter image sharing service – it has announced that it will be shutting down following legal threats from Twitter itself.
Long time Twitter users will know Twitpic well: Long before Twitter itself supported uploading images with tweets, Twitpic was there fill the gap with a simple website that let you login with your twitter details and post images. Until the launch of native images, it became almost a de-facto standard for posting images on tweets.
Sadly though, it appears Twitter has finally had enough of the third party service. According to the Twitpic blog, Twitter’s lawyers aren’t happy with its trademark:
“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.”
[…]“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.”
The company says that it will releasing a tool to let users export all of their photos over the next few days, with final shutdown happening on September 25th.
