
Twitpic is shutting down - uptown
http://blog.twitpic.com/2014/09/twitpic-is-shutting-down/
======
saurik
So, with three weeks notice, all tweets that have ever been posted that
included a picture using Twitpic (which is a remarkable number) will no longer
have their picture available? In fact, do we even have three weeks? I just did
a search for "saurik twitpic" on Twitter
([https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=saurik%20twitpic](https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=saurik%20twitpic))
to find people who had posted pictures of me, of them for me, or of my
products to show to others, and I'm seeing just a bunch of broken images (the
few that work, as in the few that still show images on Twitter's website, such
as
[https://twitter.com/MuscleNerd/status/296068187353661440](https://twitter.com/MuscleNerd/status/296068187353661440),
are simply a cache from Twitter's twimg.com: clicking through to Twitpic
doesn't work). It seems like twitpic is already offline :/. (So like, I was
going to go through and try to frantically download images I'd find relevant
in the next week, but I guess it is already too late.)

(edit:) Even the broken previews are now disappearing (making this both a
little less obvious that there is missing content and also a little more
barren-looking). I guess Twitter notices the original image is gone and stops
trying to render it through twimg.com, so most of the tweets in my posted
search result are now just "imageless" (before they looked like this one,
which is older enough that I hadn't rendered it yet to get its cache to clear:
[http://cache.saurik.com/tinyimg/twitpicoff.png](http://cache.saurik.com/tinyimg/twitpicoff.png)).

~~~
OzzyB
The Twitpic homepage[1] is also 404'ing big time, perhaps it's just a devops
issue more than them pulling the plug before the sunset date?

It almost seems like they're playing a little hardball and showing everyone
what things will be like if they disappeared from the web, which seems to be
what Twitter is threatening them with since they're unable to secure the use
of their name and yet millions of images are linked based on that (domain)
name.

Still, we've seen this story before, Twitter doesn't give a fuck about
developers now that they have sufficiently used them to build their platform
and brand.

But, what's funny is, it was the use of "tweet" that Twitter frowned upon for
3-rd party names -- "twit" was considered fine...

[1] [http://imgur.com/YLOEKEs](http://imgur.com/YLOEKEs)

~~~
jenius
> Twitter doesn't give a fuck about developers now that they have sufficiently
> used them to build their platform and brand.

I really hate that this is the standard model for building startups these
days. Make a free service, grow your userbase using investment money and by
encouraging developers to build on your platform, then once users and
developers are dependent on the platform, start littering it with ads, selling
users' data, and shutting down all your API and all the developers' work.
We've seen this happen over and over. Will it ever stop? One thing is for
sure, developers will wizen up to this if it continues and stop building on
top of platforms, which just sucks for everyone.

~~~
bambax
I completely agree with you, but for the use of the word "dependent". What
user is dependent on Twitter? Seriously? Can't one stop tweeting in an instant
without any ill effect on her life?

For developers it's a different story -- but they should know better.

~~~
pchristensen
Aside from people with huge audiences and Twitter-related businesses, anything
you choose to use and incorporate into your life is at least somewhat of a
dependency, even in the presence of substitutes.

For example, I love Chick-fil-A sandwiches. When I moved, the closest Chick-
fil-A is now far away. I was dependent on Chick-fil-A, and I'm less happy
without it, even though I have missed no meals and probably eaten healthier in
its absence.

All kinds of things are like this - if emacs went away, I could learn vim. If
my apartment building went condo, I could find another place to live. If my
favorite TV show got cancelled, I would find something else to watch, read a
book, etc. But those are all things I chose to use, and taking any of them
away would reduce my welfare by definition, even if only a little bit.

~~~
bambax
If words have meaning and if we try to stay away from hyperbole, you are not
_dependent_ on Chick-fil-A, never have been, never will be.

~~~
pchristensen
What would you suggest (more for e.g. Twitter users than my example)? Reliant?
Used to? The whole concept of dependence is that substitutes aren't perfect.
Windows/Mac, Android/iOS, emacs/vim - no one is dependent on those, but a lot
of people would be pissed if any one of them went away.

~~~
avalaunch
The issue is obviously one of semantics but your concept of dependence is not
the widely accepted concept. Dependence means completely reliant on - no
substitutions would do. The thing you're dependent on is a requirement, not a
preference. For example, you are dependent on food. Remove food from the
equation and you will perish. You are not dependent on Chick-fil-A.

Twitpic is dependent on twitter. There are no substitutions that they can make
and still survive. They can't port to a service comparable to twitter as there
are none.

EDIT: Whether or not users are dependent on twitter is up for date. I imagine
it depends on their use case.

~~~
pimlottc
> Dependence means completely reliant on - no substitutions would do.

I disagree with that. Package managers have concepts like optional
dependencies or alternatives (only 1 of multiple options required). Anyway,
you seem to be speaking of dependencies in a technical sense - build
dependencies, package dependencies, etc. In a more general sense it is quite
normal to say something like "I depend on my bike to get to work" even if I
could take the subway or use Uber, or "I depend on YouTube for my daily dose
of cat videos" even though you wouldn't really die without them.

------
sp332
Here's a reminder to please donate to the Internet Archive.
[https://archive.org/donate/index.php](https://archive.org/donate/index.php)
They have tons of old twitpic pages!
[http://web.archive.org/web/20140304234132/http://twitpic.com...](http://web.archive.org/web/20140304234132/http://twitpic.com/)
See that timeline at the top? You can go to any date and browse around.

And the Internet Archive is more than just the "Wayback Machine" that lets you
browse old versions of websites. They have massive datasets of video, audio,
and texts too - check out the examples on the homepage. And you can add your
own collections now.
[https://archive.org/create/](https://archive.org/create/)

They just finished ingesting 2TB of public Fotopedia photos before it went
down. Do you know how much it costs to store a terabyte permanently? Not an
offline backup, but accessible 24/7 forever? About $2,000! Power, cooling,
redundancy, and especially dedicated people to keep it all going.
[https://archive.org/donate/index.php](https://archive.org/donate/index.php)

~~~
toomuchtodo
Shoutout to Jason and #archiveteam. Great work on Fotopedia, ready to launch
DO instances to go grab Twitpic!

~~~
sp332
I didn't mean to leave out credit to Archive Team :) But last I checked they
don't need more help, whereas most of the data they grab ends up on the
Internet Archive who really could use the money.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> whereas most of the data they grab ends up on the Internet Archive who
> really could use the money.

Completely agreed. The IA is a treasure, an underfunded one at that.

------
pionar
Two lessons:

1\. Don't base your entire business on another business' product. Especially
one that has had such a hostile relationship with third parties. When the
other business decides to discontinue your access to its service, or otherwise
change things, or basically copy what you do under their own brand, you're
screwed.

2\. Don't create a similar name that will give you trouble in trademark
disputes. (Seriously? TwitPic? I work in technology, and even I thought they
were owned by Twitter, though admittedly, I don't use Twitter much and don't
use TwitPic at all).

~~~
ihuman
I don't think those lessons apply well to this TwitPic scenario, since they
have been breaking them for 5 years without any problem.

~~~
incongruity
Inasmuch as it came to a sudden, screeching halt _even after_ five years
highlights the value of those lessons even more so, IMHO. Five years is long
enough to get (falsely) comfortable and that's when ignoring those lessons
really gets dangerous for a business.

------
jonknee
There's more to this story... If I had to guess I would say that it's no
longer profitable (or at least, very profitable as it once was) and it's not
fun to run an image host (imagine all the trouble that comes with just
copyright issues, let alone criminal matters). The founder also has a new
startup called Pingly which I'm sure is more rewarding to be working on.

On its face Twitpic is shutting down because they won't get their trademark,
but they've never had their trademark and have had no problems operating.
Twitter isn't suing them, they're just saying they are against the trademark
application. They don't need the trademark and it's bizarre to shut your
company down for the possibility of being forced to change your name in the
future.

If Twitpic wanted to continue running they could without any changes or extra
work. It's a dead end though, Twitter has its own image service and there is
little reason besides legacy to use Twitpic. Here's their traffic situation
which should pretty well mirror revenue as it's web based advertising paying
the bills:

[https://www.quantcast.com/twitpic.com](https://www.quantcast.com/twitpic.com)

They're hemorrhaging traffic. Globally there were 85,043,992 visits in the
month period a year ago compared to 13,315,016 in the most recent month.
That's also just the past year, Twitpic has been on the decline for years and
peaked in July 2011 with a cool 280,021,248 visits.

Expenses are likely not down nearly the same amount as they have to store more
and more images every month (with less traffic there is less bandwidth, but
this doesn't count images not loaded on their website).

Just in the last month they lost 46% compared to the previous period. It's
falling off a cliff. This seems like a good way to get some sympathy on the
way out. A rude move to their users though. Maybe Twitter can step in and
offer a bottom dollar buyout so that the links don't break.

~~~
e12e
This echoes my thoughts when I read the post. Sounds like a clasdic case of
simple cloud service losing profitability; answer shut down and screw your
users. Afaik the service was free, so I don't have much sympathy for the
users; but blaming twitter seems disingenuous.

------
DanBlake
So, there is a bunch of info we dont have... But would it not make sense to
just rebrand? From a preliminary search on twitter, there is a huge amount of
users still using twitpic. Seems like this is a biz that could/should make
millions a year with some cost reductions and run mostly on autopilot.

Also, what happens to the millions of pictures previously hosted with these
guys? Even if you can backup/export all your data, think about all those links
on twitter that are going to suddenly stop working. Its basically like a URL
shortener shutting down.

Shit, send the site over here and Il provide the resources to keep it going.
Just seems like such a shame.

~~~
IgorPartola
My thoughts exactly. Why is the trademark so important to them? And as I read
it, Twitter never demanded that they stop using the name, just that they do
not apply for the registered trademark. This decision seems rash.

~~~
at-fates-hands
>>> My thoughts exactly. Why is the trademark so important to them?

Because it would protect them from Twitter going after them for infringement
on Twitter's trademarks. I'm sure Twitter knew they had no argument for the
"Likelihood of Confusion" Test and TwitPic would've been granted its trademark
in due time.

From a legal perspective, it looks like Twitter felt if they got trademark
protection, they wouldn't have any leverage to sue them to get them to stop
treading on their business. Instead of mounting a legal defense in the courts,
they simply used what leverage they did have and threatened to cut them off
from their API - which is everything for TwitPic.

For you non-legalese folks:

[http://marklaw.com/trademark-
glossary/confuse.htm](http://marklaw.com/trademark-glossary/confuse.htm)

"The terms, "confusingly similar" or "likelihood of confusion" both refer to
the standard required to prove infringement of a trademark. Specifically, if
the relevant consuming public will likely be confused or mistaken about the
source of a product or service sold using the mark in question, then
likelihood of confusion exists, and the mark has been infringed.

The likelihood of confusion test is also one of several examinations conducted
by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in determining whether to approve an
applicant’s trademark application. It is worth noting here that even if there
is no likelihood of confusion, i.e. no trademark infringement, you may still
be liable for using another company's trademark if you are blurring or
tarnishing their mark under the state and/or federal dilution laws."

~~~
squeaky-clean
>I'm sure Twitter knew they had no argument for the "Likelihood of Confusion"
Test and TwitPic would've been granted its trademark in due time.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but are you saying it's not confusing that
TwitPic is not owned by Twitter? (At least from a legal standpoint)?

I always assumed Twitpic was owned by Twitter, and it seems many other HN
members did too. I'm amazed they lasted more than a month with that name.

~~~
adventured
At the time, Twitter gave specific guidance that ecosystem applications with
the term "tweet" in it would not be allowed, but twit was OK. That was
specifically covered. I know for a fact because I ran a site with "twit" in
the title, and cleared it with Twitter. Dozens of modestly popular sites
(around data, retweets, images, etc) were using "twit" at the time.

------
vlucas
Sad news. Just the latest victim in Twitter turning on it's own developer
ecosystem. :-/

~~~
smokinjoe
They stuck it out pretty long with a good customer base, I personally kept
using them even after Twitter introduced the ability to embed images.

They just never adapted, I feel like their site design/experience hasn't
changed since their initial launch.

------
nilved
It's a shame Twitter has become so developer-hostile. When it first came out,
I remember the excitement of using Twitter as a host platform for other apps.
Now I couldn't imagine writing a line of code that interacts with their
platform. It's a nightmare. I wish app.net had been more successful: it was
clearly an attempt to ride the waves of that excitement after it'd been made
clear that Twitter had jumped the shark.

~~~
korzun
> It's a shame Twitter has become so developer-hostile

Nothing about this is developer hostile. I'm rather surprised this did not
happen sooner.

------
driverdan
I suspect Twitter's demand is the straw that broke the camel's back. I'm sure
Twitpic use has declined significantly since Twitter introduced their own
image hosting. The team has moved on to other projects so there's not much
incentive to fight it.

~~~
josefresco
Pretty big straw... Not many fully functional and profitable companies can
handle a "Drop your trademark or we'll sue" legal demand from a company like
Twitter.

~~~
LukeB_UK
Except they're not threatening to sue, they're threatening to drop TwitPic
from their API.

~~~
grayclhn
That seems like a much, much bigger threat in this case.

------
edent
A year ago I wrote a quick Python script to export all my images. If anyone
wants to use it (or improve on it) I blogged about it at
[http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/08/exporting-twitpic-images-
pyt...](http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/08/exporting-twitpic-images-python/)

~~~
hugs
THANK YOU!!!! I just used a modified version of your script to download all my
data. Again, THANK YOU!!!

My version:
[https://gist.github.com/hugs/fa7892da03ce660c212e](https://gist.github.com/hugs/fa7892da03ce660c212e)

Changes:

    
    
      * Use the short_id as the image filename.
      * Use https instead of http when downloading the json data.
      * Save the json data to individiual "page-*.json" files.
    

Quick question: Is it okay to use the MIT license for this?

~~~
edent
Go ahead :-)

------
dave1619
I don't understand why Twitpic would be shutting down. If they are growing and
doing well, then why not just change the business name? Or is it that things
aren't going well (usage dropping drastically) and they've already been
thinking about shutting down or moving on, and maybe this trademark issue was
just the last straw?

------
ChrisArchitect
long time coming really. follows long narrative/twitter history where twitter
forced it's way into owning the photo content shared on the
service....allowing only a few like twitpic to maintain the key aspect
'embeddability/previews'. What still remains interesting to me is that at one
point instagram was gaining an incredible amount of speed in becoming the
defacto picture sharing service on twitter -- but then they had the spat with
fb/insta and twitter stopped the previews for instagram pics. Instagram has a
huge community so survived fine, but it could and still could be so much more
with twitter integration...but that sanction has never been lifted.

~~~
aaronpk
Actually it was Instagram that decided to stop including the Twitter preview
of photos, because "we want images viewed on instagram.com".

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/05/kevin-systrom-on-pulling-
tw...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/05/kevin-systrom-on-pulling-twitter-
cards-integration-we-want-images-viewed-on-instagram-com/)

~~~
ChrisArchitect
sorry yeah, you're right. There just seemed to be an air of 'fb v twitter' and
content owning about it anyways....and really, at the time anyone will
remember that instagram was becoming really popular for sharing pics on
instagram + twitter...and then boom. Insta silo'd and twitter aggressively
pushing pic.twitter.com native hosting

------
nathanb
Are they just playing chicken with Twitter here?

It seems odd that, because Twitter are being trademark jerks, they're going to
just take their ball and go home. This feels more like attempted blackmail.

------
uptown
Seems they're continuing their aggressive push towards controlling it all.
Anybody have recent numbers on 3rd party client tokens remaining? And what
happens to clients like TweetBot when they run out of tokens?

------
tiles
Here is the relevant Archive Team project for Twitpic:
[http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Twitpic](http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Twitpic)

------
Damin0u
So it's time to try this backup tool [https://github.com/Stantheman/Twitpic-
Backup](https://github.com/Stantheman/Twitpic-Backup)

~~~
mlacitation
Thanks for the shoutout! Twitpic-Backup is pretty old but will definitely get
your images. Props to pcgMongo for today's PR:

[https://github.com/Stantheman/Twitpic-
Backup/pull/2](https://github.com/Stantheman/Twitpic-Backup/pull/2)

------
_puk
They could always go back to twitter and propose dropping the lawsuit if they
change their name?

Yes I know Twitpic is the brand, but if they were to simply DNS redirect
Twitpic.com to ickleimages.com [1](available!) then twitter wouldn't be
littered with old broken images, and the company could work on pushing the new
brand. They do now support more than twitter after all.

If it's a viable business, it seems crazy to throw it away to prove a point
that many probably saw as an issue from the outset (That is the use of twit*
for a service that leeches off twitter's success).

I'm sure changing every single link to serve twittermademedoit.gif would be
frowned upon.. but then the company isn't going to exist any more..

disclaimer. I've never used Twitpic before, nor posted on twitter so may be
missing something..

[1]
[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ickle](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ickle)

------
b123400
When is Twitter shutting down its API?

------
83457
Sounds like there is either more to this or this is a strategy. I'm guessing
they would like to sell but can't do to possibly of being sued by Twitter over
their name. Not so much that Twitpic can't continue but they can't get further
funding or bought out due to risk.

------
jkaljundi
I wonder how well Twitpic is doing revenue and profits wise and how much that
affected the decision?

It's hard to believe only the patent issue is the cause here. Open closing
down announcements are nice, but should list all the facts and circumstances,
not try to spin it PR wise.

~~~
poopsintub
A 2010 interview with Mixergy, the founder Noah Everett stated: "TwitPic is
generating $1.5 to $2 million in ad sales on an annual basis, with 70% profit
margins. It was roughly similar revenue in 2012.

In interview last month, he said his other company, Pingly will revolutionize
email. He's changing focus on something that has real revenue potential and
possibly good VC?

------
Eiriksmal
I'd always assumed Twitter had purchased Twitpic a long time ago. Interesting
plot twist.

------
biot
They're going to pivot and introduce a suite of new services which use the
same underlying engine to share pictures across a variety of social media
sites:

    
    
      Googpic: share on Google+
      Facepic: share on Facebook
      Instapic: share on Instagram
      Tumbpic: share on Tumblr
      Pinterpic: share on Pinterest
    

When interviewed, the founder stated "We plan on filing trademark applications
for these new service names and anticipate no further legal issues. It's
regrettable that Twitter is acting so unreasonable by taking reasonable steps
to protect its mark."

~~~
mikeash
They weren't facing legal issues with Twitter, so that last part seems
somewhat off base.

------
jacquesm
Never ever, ever build a service that is 100% dependent on another service
that you don't have alternatives for and never use someone else's trademark in
order to leverage your business. That's two fatal mistakes in one go, they
should be rather surprised that they held on this long. But maybe the 'user
outrage' will be enough to get twitter to buy them, though - assuming twitter
isn't dumb - that would be a bad move because that would lead to hundreds of
copycat attempts.

------
zyx321
To be perfectly honest, I am surprised to learn that twitpic is owned by a
different company than twitter itself, which is precisely what trademark law
is supposed to prevent.

------
unclebunkers
I must not be paying enough attention, because this doesn't make a lick of
sense from Twitters side. If I had a company that was willing to host images
instead of me, at no cost to me, and no restrictions on me, I would be a
barking mad idiot to disrupt this relationship. Unless I was about to sell...

~~~
jmathai
I don't think it mentions anything about Twitpic as a service. It's only about
the trademark.

That being said it makes a lot of sense for Twitter want to control the user
experience. The cost of hosting low resolution thumbnails can't be a pressing
issue for Twitter. User experience and engagement on the other hand....

I'm not saying it's worth sabotaging relationships with 3rd party developers
but there's a certain mindset in which this type of thinking makes a lot of
sense.

------
topynate
If Twitter killed the API that would put Twitpic out of business - but how is
that worse than shutting it down? They might as well call Twitter's bluff, if
the alternative is just as bad.

------
throwawayycacct
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4315663](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4315663)
I guess stocktwits is next on the chopping block.

------
msvan
I think the issue here is that Twitpic's business model is having people leave
the main Twitter interface to take them to another domain, where Twitpic can
extract advertising money from the impressions. Twitter has image previews
these days, which offer a nicer user experience and keep users on the main
Twitter site. With Twitter hosting images itself, it makes little business
sense for them to continue letting Twitpic make ad money off a feature
duplicated externally.

------
runarb
Hopefully somone like the Archive Team will at least manage to save most of
the images. Urls used for images and links seems to be sequential numbers.

~~~
TheLoneWolfling
I just _really_ hope that no-where in the shutdown does twitpic put up a
restrictive robots.txt. Archive.org's retroactive robots.txt and all that.

------
k-mcgrady
>> "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."

Is this supposed to be serious? You're shutting down your company because
you're stubborn and not getting what you want??

~~~
bubblicious
Probably a poker move to put pressure on Twitter... If the company is doing
well, they'll do what it takes to keep it running, even if it means changing
its brand.

------
shalmanese
Isn't the entire reason companies aggressively pursue trademark claims against
small fry precisely because lack of enforcement leads to weakening of the
mark?

I don't see how Twitter has a brand confusion case against them since they've
obviously known twitpic existed for many years now and haven't asserted brand
confusion until now.

------
dlsym
> "A few weeks ago Twitter contacted our legal demanding that we abandon our
> trademark"

Guess it's time to abandon Twitter.

~~~
stesch
Alternatives?

~~~
dlsym
Well... there is app.net - But honestly I don't think that anyone beyond a
certain german podcast-bubble really uses this.

~~~
stesch
German podcast bubble? I'm from Germany and I don't know what you are talking
about.

I asked App.net about alternative paying methods because in Germany it's not
very common to use your credit card. Nothing.

------
spiritplumber
This is why you want to run your own server for this sort of thing... or at
least use something standardised and portable.

------
mrjatx
After having both Lightbox7 and whatever Sonys big photo-store/share platform
close down and wipe out my high school/college albums I've learned to
definitely not rely on any image hosting services.

Back then there wasn't twitter or any other good social media and you found
things out by visiting the site or through ICQ.

------
dkarapetyan
Lets put this in perspective. Some twitter pictures are going to disappear. In
the grand scheme of things the people who had the luxury of using this service
will survive just fine. Please stop the navel gazing.

------
Kayou
Lesson to learn: don't tie down your service and/or brand to an existing
brand/service. Otherwise you're both dependent of that service and/or at risk
to get sued sooner or later.

~~~
vblord
This is a good point. I've heard of many companies learning this point the
hard way.

------
joshdance
This is revealing in 2 ways.

1\. Twitter doesn't care about developers. 2\. Twitpic wasn't making enough
money.

------
theoutlander
Why didn't Twitter acquire them instead? Did they try that and fail?

~~~
cwyers
Why would they? What assets does Twitpic have that Twitter wants? They built a
"better" service on their own. They don't need the brand Twitpic. What's left?

~~~
the_ancient
thousands/millions of images form twitter users that could be converted
seemlessly in to twitter's in house solution providing a good user experience
for their users preventing the breakage of the site and creating a PR problem
for them...

------
snowwrestler
I don't get it. Why not just change the name and keep going?

------
sfall
i saw an article mention noah working on this
[http://pingly.com/](http://pingly.com/)

------
talhof8
Isn't he the guy from Heello?

------
ytwit
Twitter being dicks... As usual

------
zhte415
Link rot

------
pbreit
Just change the name already. Jeepers.

------
OedipusRex
At what point do you forego patents for the sake of usability. Twitpic has
been around for so long and they have tons of media hosted, all of those
Tweets are now essentially broken. Twitter should instead foster a
relationship with Twitpic.

Twitpic is DEPENDENT on Twitter to work, it's not taking users from Twitter at
all (other than hosting media). Truly sad to see.

~~~
eric_h
USPTO: US Patent and Trademark Office. P is not the relevant letter here, T
is.

