Twitter made an agreement with Twitpic to own its massive archived database of photos and sustain the Twitpic domain.
Twitpic is finally dead but Twitter has played a major role in keeping the heritage of the failed image-sharing website alive. It has been quite a ride for Twitpic and those who have been watching the startup slowly sink. After almost two months of efforts to save the company, Twitpic was finally put to rest on Saturday, Oct. 25. But Twitter found the startup's domain and photo archive worth saving so it entered into a mutual agreement with the founder of Twitpic, Noah Everett, to keep the site alive for the time being.
In a final blog post by Everett on Saturday, he said the deal with Twitter allowed the photos and links to remain accessible even after the service was officially shut down. This allows users to login to the Twitpic profile to view and delete content or the account completely on Twitpic.com. The images can be downloaded by logging into the account. But the deal does not entertain new photos or data on the site and the mobile apps on iOS and Android are no longer available and operable.
"I'm happy to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to give them the Twitpic domain and photo archive, thus keeping the photos and links alive for the time being," Everett wrote. "Twitter shares our goal of protecting our users and this data. Also, since Twitpic's user base consists of Twitter users, it makes sense to keep this data with Twitter."
Twitpic originally announced that the service would be shutting down on Sept. 25 after Twitter opposed its trademark dispute and threatened to cut off its API access, making the service useless. A few days later, Twitpic said it had found itself a buyer and would continue to live. Earlier this month, the company's founder apologized for the acquisition news and said it was a false alarm.
Finally, Twitpic chose to shut down on Oct. 25 and it went down as planned.
