41–50 of 155 posts
Is this supposed to be serious? You're shutting down your company because you're stubborn and not getting what you want??
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.
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…
That is a terrible generalization. That pretty much covers every ISV ever. And large companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple all have a history of "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" when it comes to closing out 3rd parties.
However I think your point is valid for companies like Twitter, and to a slightly lesser extent Facebook. These companies don't have a vested interest in 3rd parties building on their platforms.
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…
Possibly the most naive statement ever made about software business models.
> 2. Don't create a similar name that will give you trouble in trademark disputes
Often this is not a problem, as once you've gotten your foot in the door you can relinquish the conflicting mark and continue your business. In any case, the trademark didn't really conflict anyway, it was just a legal tactic. The API block was the end goal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, selli…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, selli…
For developers it's a different story -- but they should know better.
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…
Did anything major happened after some of the early URL shorteners died? We survived just fine.