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Twitpic is shutting down

blog.twitpic.com

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Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#81

Post by pchristensen »

bambax wrote: post #74
pchristensen wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from people with huge audiences and Twitter-related businesses, anything you choose to use and incorporate into your life is at least somewhat of a dependency, even in the presence of substitutes. For example, I love Chick-fil-A sandwiches. When I moved, the closest Chick-fil-A is now far away. I was dependent on Chick-fil-A, and I'm less happy without it, even though I have missed no meals and probably eaten h…

If words have meaning and if we try to stay away from hyperbole, you are not dependent on Chick-fil-A, never have been, never will be.

What would you suggest (more for e.g. Twitter users than my example)? Reliant? Used to? The whole concept of dependence is that substitutes aren't perfect. Windows/Mac, Android/iOS, emacs/vim - no one is dependent on those, but a lot of people would be pissed if any one of them went away.

Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#82

Post by MikeKusold »

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…

> But would it not make sense to just rebrand?

Most likely not. TwitPic's only possible exit was an acquisition by Twitter, who has since developed their own image hosting platform.

This is the danger of tying your startup to another company that has the power to shut you down. The company that you are tied to needs to either acquire you, or you are at their mercy.

Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#83

Post by shalmanese »

Isn't the entire reason companies aggressively pursue trademark claims against small fry precisely because lack of enforcement leads to weakening of the mark?

I don't see how Twitter has a brand confusion case against them since they've obviously known twitpic existed for many years now and haven't asserted brand confusion until now.

Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#84

Post by mseebach »

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…

1 should rather be "don't build your business on being an obvious missing feature from another product, especially such that if the product implements that feature, they make you irrelevant overnight" with 1a: "if you do, understand that your business' potential exists entirely in the short term".

Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#85

Post by biot »

They're going to pivot and introduce a suite of new services which use the same underlying engine to share pictures across a variety of social media sites:

  Googpic: share on Google+
  Facepic: share on Facebook
  Instapic: share on Instagram
  Tumbpic: share on Tumblr
  Pinterpic: share on Pinterest
When interviewed, the founder stated "We plan on filing trademark applications for these new service names and anticipate no further legal issues. It's regrettable that Twitter is acting so unreasonable by taking reasonable steps to protect its mark."

Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#86

Post by danudey »

robert_tweed wrote: post #62
daigoba66 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't base your entire business on another business' product. 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 h…

Indeed, the obvious counter-example to that lesson is imgur.

imgur is a good service even without Reddit, though (and I often use it just to send nice, short, copyable image links to people). TwitPic without Twitter is almost worthless, like a worse imgur. Its single defining characteristic was 'put pictures on twitter automatically!' but as soon as Twitter supported posting photos directly their entire business model was gone.

Honestly I'm surprised they've lasted this long; they had no differentiating factor other than being new, and they had no real features that anyone cared about. I haven't even seen a twitpic link in years, let alone clicked on one.

Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#87

Post by sp332 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #79
sp332 wrote: post #66

Here's a reminder to please donate to the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/donate/index.php They have tons of old twitpic pages! http://web.archive.org/web/20140304234132/http://twitpic.com... See that timeline at the top? You can go to any date and browse around. And the Internet Archive is more than just the "Wayback Machine" that lets you browse old versions of websites. They have massive datasets of video, a…

Shoutout to Jason and #archiveteam. Great work on Fotopedia, ready to launch DO instances to go grab Twitpic!

I didn't mean to leave out credit to Archive Team :) But last I checked they don't need more help, whereas most of the data they grab ends up on the Internet Archive who really could use the money.

Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#88

Post by bubblicious »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #41

>> "Unfortunately we do not have the resources to fend off a large company like Twitter to maintain our mark which we believe whole heartedly is rightfully ours. Therefore, we have decided to shut down Twitpic." Is this supposed to be serious? You're shutting down your company because you're stubborn and not getting what you want??

Probably a poker move to put pressure on Twitter... If the company is doing well, they'll do what it takes to keep it running, even if it means changing its brand.

Re: Twitpic is shutting down

#90

Post by funkyy »

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…

Like it would hard to set up 10-20 cheap OVH servers to serve all photos accessed at least once last 6 months... Pay for them for 2 years and leave with a dignity. $15-20K spent, all happy, you are an exit hero.

But yeah, there is barely any honour in exits like that lately...

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