After Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) forced Twitpic to shut down last month, Twitter has stepped in to play white knight to preserve users’ photosand data. The photo archive is safe for now, but it is unclear just how long they will remain safe.
In September, Twitter forced Twitpic to cease operations, after the Twitter legal team told the company that it needs to abandon its trademark application or lose access to the Twitter API. Essentially, there was nothing that Twitpic could do but shut down. Twitter until recently did not have a way to upload or share pictures on its social network. Twitpic had become the go to picture hosting service for many Twitter users around the world. When Twitter came out with its own solution for image sharing and hosting there was little use for Twitpic. Now, after years of being the go to image hosting for Twitter they were shuttering their doors and going to take the archive offline. In a post from founder, Noah Everett, on Twitpic’s blog he stated that it reached an agreement with Twitter. It will be giving Twitter the Twitpic domain and the photo archive, ensuring the photos and links are still good – for the time being.
The blog post on Twitpic says that the site will no longer be taking new photos or data, essentially putting the site into a read-only mode. The apps for the site will no longer be supported, and have been removed off of the Android and iOS app stores. Users will be allowed to login to their profiles and delete content or account. Conversely, users can export and download their data from Twitpic.
So what this means for users of Twitpic is that the profiles and data are safe for now, but it is unknown for how long, Users who want to back up their data should do so quickly since it is not known for how long the data will stay safe.
