Twitpic is shutting down and Twitter is to blame

[Shawn Knight]

Twitpic has announced plans to shut down on September 25. The service, launched in 2008 by Noah Everett as a way to share images on Twitter, is ironically now being forced out of business by the very platform it supports.

In a blog post on the matter, Everett said this was an unexpected and hard announcement for them to make and they wanted to lay out what led to the decision.

According to Everett, Twitter contacted their legal department a few weeks ago and demanded they abandon their trademark application or risk losing access to their API - the lifeblood of Twitpic. He said this took them by surprise considering Twitpic has been around since early 2008 and their trademark application has been in the patent office since 2009.

Everett said his company simply doesn’t have the resources needed to fend off a large company like Twitter and will instead be shutting down.

As Mashable points out, Twitpic’s relationship with the microblogging platform has been strained since at least 2011. When Twitter introduced its own photo-sharing service that year, Everett launched what amounted to a mock version of Twitter called Heello.

A rep for Twitter told the publication that it was sad that Twitpic was shutting down but legal action was necessary to protect their brand.

In the interim, Twitpic will provide its users with a feature allowing them to export all of their photos and videos. This should be live in the next few days, Everett said.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/57965-twitpic-is-shutting-down-and-twitter-is-to-blame.html

 

[Satish Mallya]

"...simply doesn’t have the resources needed to fend off a large company like Twitter and will instead be shutting down"

This raises my hackles.

 

[fyrfaktry]

"...simply doesn’t have the resources needed to fend off a large company like Twitter and will instead be shutting down"

This raises my hackles.

Concentration of wealth is a very nasty thing.

 

[Guest]

Guys calm down about this "concentration of wealth is a terrible thing" auto reaction to everything. People think they know a lot about what they don't but get very opinionated about the cause and don't think why they might be wrong nonetheless and don't know what they don't know. (1) Twitter has to sue these guys, it's not their fault. It's required by US trade law. If you have a trademark in circulation ("Twitter" which clearly came first) you are required to show you are protecting it otherwise someone can make claim that your trademark is invalid because you didn't take steps to prevent others from using it. If they didn't, if I wanted to create a company called "Twitter2" I could and would claim "well Twitpic was OK as a name and they didn't sue or do anything about that so they obviously don't care" and Twitter would have legal issues defending against that claim the way trademark law is setup. There are many instances of firms having to sue for this reason and it has nothing to do with whether they like the company they sue or not, they just have to to keep their trademark valid. (2) I'm totally confused by why this company "has to shut down" now because they can't get their trademark. Twitter wasn't taking away API access in general. Twitpic could just change the name of Twitpic and just keep on running their business just as they did before but with a new name. It's reasonable Twitter thinks the name "Twitpic" is an infringement and is requiring them to change it, that's all this article is saying. (3) This has nothing to do with a "concentration of wealth is a terrible thing" issue. Try to look for other logical reasons to things. Or if it's possible you don't understand the possible reasons for things say something to yourself like "I don't understand" rather than just define everything in one viewpoint.

 

[Guest]

Your heart may be in the right place, but your understanding of the law is quite faulty. Realistically in a fair fight I.e. equal amounts of money, Twitpic would probably have prevailed. Twitter knows that Twitpic is taking some user share away from them and they have the money to bully smaller companies around. It's literally that simple. I don't know if I'd simply blame concentration of wealth some much as good old fashion capitalism.

 

[wastedkill]

Twitter has literally no resources to do a lawsuit they are running on fumes... like seriously now come on... get twitter to buy them out if they have a few dollars too spare...