Twitpic’s photo archive acquired by Twitter hours before deletion

Twitpic, the photo-sharing service built to be used with and almost completely reliant on Twitter itself, was forced into shutting down back in September, but its archive, full of years of user photos, was on its way to deletion until Twitter stepped in at the last minute. Oddly enough it was actually Twitter that forced Twitpic to close its doors, but at least now the latter’s archive will be preserved as it is.

Here was the situation: Twitter was threatening Twitpic with a trademark dispute and left them with two options; drop its claim to the word “Twitpic,” or lose access to the social network’s API, in turn making it useless. Twitpic was unable to find a new owner, and founder Noah Everett said that the site was scheduled to be shut down on October 25th. A very last-minute deal will see ownership of the Twitpic site and its photos transferred to Twitter.

If Twitpic had shut down, it would mean years of tweets with images attached left empty. Back before Twitter was able to host images itself, Twitpic was almost always the default service that various apps used have photos appear in users’ timelines.

In a blog post, Everett commented that “Twitter shares our goal of protecting our users and this data.” This means that the Twitpic site will now remain in a read-only mode, keeping photos and their links alive, but preventing anything new from being posted. Likewise the Twitpic apps for iOS and Android have been taken down, and users can sign in to Twitpic to export their photos and/or delete their account if they choose.

SOURCE Twitpic Blog