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.