
Twitpic Couldn’t Find an Acquirer, Will Shut Down After All on Oct 25th - LukeB_UK
http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/16/twitpic-couldnt-find-an-acquirer-will-shut-down-after-all-on-oct-25th/
======
IvyMike
From Jason Scott's twitter, I take it the ArchiveTeam efforts to back up all
the data will resume.

On this note, you can help: you can download the ArchiveTeam Warrior virtual
machine, which is both easy to run and helpful to the ArchiveTeam. Your
computer will help grab more of the missing data before it disappears forever.

ArchiveTeam projects tend to pop up and disappear quickly, much like the
websites they are archiving, so you can even just leave a warrior running and
when something happens, it will be at the ready. (My Warrior is currently
working on the GameMaker sandbox project, for example.)

You can also run the Warrior scripts directly, without a VM, in some setups.

I glossed over some of the details; there is a lot more info at the link
below. I encourage you to try running a Warrior yourself.

[http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Warrior](http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Warrior)

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LukeB_UK
Previously:

Twitpic is shutting down (2014-09-04):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8269553](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8269553)

"We've been acquired and Twitpic will live on" (2014-09-18):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8337867](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8337867)

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photofriendly
Stating "we've been acquired" in their past tweet, and now stating "We were
almost certain we had found a new home for Twitpic (hence our previous tweet),
but agreeable terms could not be met" are two very different things. I don't
like the dishonesty from their past tweet.

~~~
abat
Acquisitions are complex and take a long time to really close. Most of the
time you see articles about a company being sold, the deal isn't actually done
yet. WhatsApp agreed to terms in February, but the deal didn't actually close
until a week ago. Was it a lie to say that WhatsApp had sold to Facebook
before October?

That said, I have no idea what the case is here.

------
mhartl
Twitpic's unfortunate fate is a reminder that your company hasn't been
acquired until the money is in the bank. As pg put it, "Deals fall through"
[1]:

 _Startup founders tend to be optimistic. This can work well in technology, at
least some of the time, but it 's the wrong way to approach raising money.
Better to assume investors will always let you down. Acquirers too, while
we're at it. At YC one of our secondary mantras is "Deals fall through." No
matter what deal you have going on, assume it will fall through. The
predictive power of this simple rule is amazing._

[1]:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/fundraising.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/fundraising.html)

~~~
pbreit
This one is a little harder to swallow since the alternative is shutting down
the service with no cash in hand. Surely there was a deal on the table to keep
the service running?

~~~
jmathai
The terms still have to be compelling to be acquired. Acquisition isn't a
panacea by any means. The details can make shutting down a company more
attractive then going through with the acquisition.

A simple example is an acquisition that doesn't sound terribly exciting, pays
out money in earn outs and puts those earn outs 4 years into the future.

Sometimes it's better to just get on with your life...

~~~
pbreit
If the monthly burn wasn't too bad, I'd consider taking it on.

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ChuckMcM
This is a curious statement _" but agreeable terms could not be met."_ Since
the alternate choice was "death" one wonders who preferred that over some form
of acquisition. I suppose it is always possible that the acquirer was
steadfast in demanding certain team members be part of the deal and could not
come to an arrangement with them, but that is the only thing that I can come
up with that might prevent at least _something_ from going through.

~~~
jmathai
I think there's lots of things that can go wrong in an acquisition which fall
under _" agreeable terms could not be met"_. It's hard to tell if a letter of
intent was drafted or signed which would clearly lay out the terms. If not
then I'd say the acquisition announcement was made prematurely.

If the terms hadn't been laid out then there's a whole slew of things that
could cause it to go south on either side.

------
Animats
Twitpic probably could have won a trademark lawsuit against Twitter. They'd
registered "TWITPIC" as a trademark, and the USPTO had approved it, then
published it for opposition. Twitter opposed it, disagreeing with the USPTO.
So there was a case pending before the Trademark Trials and Appeals Board.

At the time "TWITPIC" was first used, Twitter did not have an image product.
The USPTO saw no conflict with "TWITTER" as a trademark. The examiner did see
a conflict with "TWITVID", so Twitpic and Twitvid cut a deal and reported that
to the USPTO, allowing the trademark registration to proceed. It's quite
possible that Twitpic would have prevailed in court. It won't go to court,
though; Twitpic abandoned their application on October 8, 2014.

"TWITVID", meanwhile, has their trademark registered, and continues to
operate.

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segmondy
I'll acquire them for $10. Oh wait, they do probably say no, because their
exit strategy was to get acquired by twitter or someone else for millions upon
millions. Any money is better than no more, and the market is willing to pay
what it's currently worth, they should sell it to the highest bidder and be
done with it.

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timdierks
I wonder how much the twitpic domain is worth? That's a lot of dangling link
juice.

It would be great for them to get a copy of everything to the Internet
Archive.

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coherentpony
Proof that forcing your users to give the rights to their content to your
business does not necessarily mean your business is a good one.

------
kretor
Imgur and others handle to make a profit with ads. Why can't Twitcpic?

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bitJericho
The more this happens the more I agree with Jason Scott that it should be
illegal to allow data to be arbitrarily destroyed like this.

~~~
tbrownaw
_Users can now export their photos until the 25th, at which point they’ll
vanish into the void._

Since you want this to be illegal, what do you propose instead? Some country's
taxpayers pay to keep the servers up maybe?

And really _why_ should it be illegal, doesn't the government stick it's nose
into far too much already? Do you mean _illegal_ illegal, or breach-of-
contract "illegal" (in which case, what contract)?

~~~
kalleboo
It would be interesting to see a form of "data insurance". Company pays
insurance premiums by stored TB, and if they go bust, the insurance company
ensures the data is kept hosted (be it themselves or by preparing the data and
donating resources to the Internet Archive)

~~~
toomuchtodo
An Internet Fidelity Bond, if you will.

