Twitter has agreed to keep alive the website as well as photo archive of Twitpic, the image-sharing service that was supposed to shut down on Saturday following a failed acquisition deal.
"I'm happy to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to give them the Twitpic domain and photo archive, thus keeping the photos and links alive for the time being", said Twitpic founder Noah Everett in a blog post.
Launched back in 2008, Twitpic was probably one of the best third-party image-sharing services for Twitter users. But it became less relevant over the past few years as the microblogging service made it easier to upload photos directly.
Last month, Twitpic announced that it's shutting down following a trademark dispute with Twitter, but backtracked a couple of weeks later as it had found an unnamed acquirer. As it turned out, the deal didn't end up going through because Twitpic and the mystery acquirer could not agree on acquisition terms, something the company revealed a few days ago, again saying that it would shut down – this time on October 25th.
"Twitter shares our goal of protecting our users and this data", Everett said, adding that since Twitpic's user base consists of Twitter users, it makes sense to keep this data with Twitter.
Although Twitter has rescued Twitpic, the photo-sharing service is still effectively dead. Twitpic's website will operate in read-only mode, which means that it will not accept new photos and data. In addition, the iOS and Android apps have also been removed from app stores and will no longer be supported. You can, however, still login to your profile to export, download, or delete data, or delete your account on Twitpic.com.