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Twitpic is shutting down

blog.twitpic.com

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Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#31

Post by ihuman »

pionar wrote: post #28

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? T…

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

Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#32

Post by richrad »

gorner wrote: post #13
DanBlake wrote: post #7

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…

Yeah, they really should have just looked at rebranding. A few Instagram-related services (e.g. Webstagram, Statigram) had to do so recently, IIRC, and I don't think they're significantly worse off. Thing is, even if Twitter tacitly condoned it for years, the name "TwitPic" is pretty obviously derived from "Twitter" and is trading on their (Twitter Inc.'s) reputation. Even their logo is styled similarly to the old Tw…

Leo Laporte had "twit" first and gave Twitter permission to use it back in the beginning.

Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#34

Post by 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.

Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#36

Post by jenius »

OzzyB wrote: post #23
saurik wrote: post #8

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 ) to find people who had posted pictures of me, of them for me, or of my products to show…

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…

> 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.

Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#37

Post by 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.

Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#38

Post by cowsandmilk »

richrad wrote: post #32
gorner wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they really should have just looked at rebranding. A few Instagram-related services (e.g. Webstagram, Statigram) had to do so recently, IIRC, and I don't think they're significantly worse off. Thing is, even if Twitter tacitly condoned it for years, the name "TwitPic" is pretty obviously derived from "Twitter" and is trading on their (Twitter Inc.'s) reputation. Even their logo is styled similarly to the old Tw…

Leo Laporte had "twit" first and gave Twitter permission to use it back in the beginning.

Leo Laporte likes to play up having "twit" in relation to twitter, but as far as trademarks, his claim would have been laughable. They aren't in the same business.

Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#40

Post by pionar »

ihuman wrote: post #31
pionar wrote: post #28

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? T…

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

Yeah, they do. It's hasn't been 5 years without any problem, it's was 2 years without any problem, and 3 years of being slowly strangled by Twitter.

Plus, if the definition of success is "last 5 years", then that's not a very lofty goal.

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