Twitpic is shutting down

Post by danellis » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 8:52 PM UTC

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.

Post by EGreg » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 9:08 PM UTC

jenius wrote: post #36

OzzyB wrote: post #23

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…

Post by joshdance » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 9:13 PM UTC

Post by mahouse » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 9:39 PM UTC

IanDrake wrote: post #59

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'm not sure why anyone would dispute #1. Perhaps they interpret it too broadly. You can have some success basing a business on another for a while maybe, but unless you have a solid agreement as to how that relationship works, the rug can be pulled out from under you at any moment. And that's usually what happens.

Post by sp332 » Thu, Sep 04, 2014, 9:42 PM UTC

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…