

An Open Letter to TwitPic - screeley
http://blog.embed.ly/an-open-letter-to-twitpic

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drgath
Twitpic is dead to me. The fact that they are shutting out developers is quite
comical considering the whole reason they exist is because of the Twitter API.

~~~
Cabal
It looks to me like they're shutting out competitors looking to replace their
service. That's apples and oranges compared to Twitter, which they are
supplementing.

~~~
cheald
If your users are moving _their_ data over to another service, then a) it's
their prerogative to do so, and b) maybe it says something about your service.
"We IP block competitors" is not a bullet point in your defensibility
strategy.

~~~
Cabal
_If your users are moving their data over to another service, then a) it's
their prerogative to do so, and b) maybe it says something about your
service._

No one has suggested otherwise, but you're under no requirement to help your
competitors.

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ericz
Twitpic's solution was to block Rackspace Cloud entirely? I don't know much
about their conflict with Posterous but I do know that they're taking a wholly
terrible approach

~~~
mrtron
Why is that a terrible approach? It seems to have worked.

If a wound is bleeding profusely - you put a cloth on it. Sure it doesn't heal
you, but it is hardly a terrible approach.

~~~
woodall
Terrible Approach -> Give all Posterous import tool users goatse

Bad -> Block a whole rack space

Good -> Negotiate some sort of deal with Posterous

Better -> Let this site access the rss feed

Say I run a blog on the Rackspace Cloud, and want to use my own custom script
to rip photos from my personal TwitPic account. Well, I can't because it is
banned. In it's entirety.

It seems to have worked in the sense that the Posterous import tool no longer
functions. It does not seem to work in the sense that they banned, albeit
small, section of their user base.

~~~
mrtron
From what perspective?

From 99% of users' perspective: blocking rackspace has no effect on them
unless they try to switch to posterous.

You are one of a handful of users running something else on rackspace for
personal use. Sure for 5 users this was a bad approach.

From twitpic's persepective: it stopped them from losing users to posterous.
Win.

~~~
Terretta
What makes anyone think this _stopped_ TwitPic from losing users to Posterous?

I would imagine any user sophisticated enough to think of moving, would have
some opinions about data liberation and services that try to lock them in.

On the contrary, I would imagine this puts more users on notice that TwitPic
is locking users' own data in. Such users will begin looking for other places
to post pics to.

~~~
shantanubala
Not to mention, people may already have local copies of stuff they post of
TwitPic. Blocking Posterous just means re-uploading stuff, which is a
nuisance. The only person who loses here is TwitPic.

Unless you're as big as Facebook, you can't really monopolize user data.

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mseebach
Posterous should make a client-side proxy for pulling the feed. Just a small
Java applet, or Flash or whatever (I'm not 100% sure how cross-site protection
is implemented), and have users run that to down- and upload the pictures.

Once that's in place they can send an email to twitpic, telling them that
they've circumvented the block, and they should feel free to unblock
Rackspace.

~~~
bradgessler
I'm pretty sure this could be implemented with JavaScript.

~~~
mseebach
For the RSS, yes, but I don't think JS can download and then upload an image.

~~~
windsurfer
With HTML5, you can.

~~~
whyleyc
How ? Do you have links to any sample code at all ?

~~~
mseebach
HTML5 File API, it seems -
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en/using_files_from_web_applic...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/using_files_from_web_applications)

Looks pretty sweet!

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logic
Well, that explains why I haven't been able to reach TwitPic via my Slicehost-
hosted proxy.

~~~
mrtron
Which begs the question why doesn't Posterous use multiple proxies from
various providers. Perhaps they are now - but it seems too late for other
Rackspace clients.

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tptacek
What's the Posterous/TwitPic drama?

~~~
protomyth
The link is in the open letter: <http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/29/twitpic-
posterous-lawyers/>

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datums
Why not implement a workaround (plan b), while you work on getting de-listed ?

~~~
pwim
Embedly is an api that allows you to embed over 100 services in your site.
Twitpic is just one such services, so it is probably not worth their while to
make a workaround.

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screeley
All better. TwitPic made changes to whitelist Embedly.
<http://blog.embed.ly/twitpic>

