TinyPic was a

photo A photograph (also known as a photo, image, or picture) is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor, such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are now crea ...

- and

video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syst ...

-sharing service owned and operated by Photobucket.com that allowed users to upload, link, and share images and videos on the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

. The idea was similar to

URL shortening URL shortening is a technique on the World Wide Web in which a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) may be made substantially shorter and still direct to the required page. This is achieved by using a redirect which links to the web page that has ...

, in that each uploaded image was given a relatively short internet address. An account was not required to use TinyPic. The service shut down on September 9, 2019 due to declining income.

Images and videos

TinyPic allowed the upload and hosting of JPEG (jpg), png, gif, and

TIFF Tag Image File Format, abbreviated TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is widely supported by scanning, faxing, word process ...

files. Images larger than 1,600 pixels (either in width or height) were automatically resized to the largest acceptable size while maintaining their original aspect ratio. The site required a

CAPTCHA A CAPTCHA ( , a contrived acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart") is a type of challenge–response test used in computing to determine whether the user is human. The term was coined in 2003 b ...

to be filled in each time an image was uploaded. TinyPic did not accept standard-definition video files which are larger than 500 megabytes in size or longer than 15 minutes in length. Videos longer than 15 minutes were truncated to 15 minutes. Users could also upload high-definition videos as long as they were no larger than 500 megabytes in size and no longer than 5 minutes in length. TinyPic officially accepted the uploading of videos in the following video formats:

3g2 3GP (3GPP file format) is a multimedia container format defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for 3G UMTS multimedia services. It is used on 3G mobile phones but can also be played on some 2G and 4G phones. 3G2 (3GPP2 ...

, 3gp,

3gp2 The 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2) is a collaboration between telecommunications associations to make a globally applicable third generation ( 3G) mobile phone system specification within the scope of the ITU's IMT-2000 project. In ...

, 3gpp, 3p,

asf ASF may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Alabama Shakespeare Festival, a drama festival * ''Asimov's Science Fiction'', a U.S.-based English-language science fiction magazine containing SF stories Science and technology Biological * A ...

, avi, divx, dv, dvx,

flv Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content (e.g., TV shows, movies, etc.) over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There are t ...

, moov, mov, mp4, mpe,

mpeg4 MPEG-4 is a group of international standards for the compression of digital audio and visual data, multimedia systems, and file storage formats. It was originally introduced in late 1998 as a group of audio and video coding formats and related ...

mpeg The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by ISO and IEC that sets standards for media coding, including compression coding of audio, video, graphics, and genomic data; and transmission and f ...

, mpg4, mpg, qt, rm,

wmv Windows Media Video (WMV) is a series of video codecs and their corresponding video coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV consists of three distinct codecs: The original video compression technology ...

, and

xvid Xvid (formerly "XviD") is a video codec library following the MPEG-4 video coding standard, specifically MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP). It uses ASP features such as b-frames, global and quarter pixel motion compensation, lumi mas ...

and generally users were able to upload all but the most unusual formats. Tinypic deleted images and videos that were not associated with a user account and that had not been viewed for 90 days. Tinypic would sometimes reuse URLs of deleted images, resulting in old image links showing unintended content.

Service interruptions

In July 2010, TinyPic blocked access to the site to users from Argentina, cutting off thousands of users to access, view, or delete their stored images. As of August 2010, no statement has been released from TinyPic nor any of the numerous users' questions replied; instead, a sign appears upon accessing the website inviting users to join Photobucket, but without giving any solutions for the users' stored images and videos. On September 23, 2010, TinyPic blocked uploads from "international locations" (i.e. locations outside of the USA, UK, Australia, Canada, and others) and that all links are turned off. TinyPic gave the following explanation on its homepage in regards to the issues on September 23, 2010: "We heard from many of our users in regards to these changes and we appreciate your feedback. TinyPic has restored linking to your images and enabled uploading. Please rest assured no content was removed from the site. We tried to notify users on TinyPic and requested they move their content to Photobucket. Unfortunately this messaging was insufficient and has taken many of our users by surprise and we apologize. Our intent was to begin combining some of the best features of TinyPic and Photobucket, thereby offering users a better experience. Any changes in the future will be better communicated. Once again, we apologize for the inconvenience."

Shutdown

In July 2019, a message appeared on the homepage announcing that the service would be shutting down in 2019. The message cited decreasing advertising revenues which had made it impractical to continue with a free service, and recommended that users switch to its sister site Photobucket. Photobucket had abandoned free image hosting in 2017 and requires payment to host images. On September 9, 2019, Tinypic was officially shut down with a period to allow existing users prior to the shutdown date to download all their photos up until September 19, 2019.

Criticism

One of the main criticisms leveled at TinyPic was that uploaded images or videos, which were not associated with an account, usually got deleted within a few days or weeks, resulting in any post or website that used TinyPic displaying a "picture not found" error message, and the same URLs being reused for other images some time later. Images or videos which were associated with an account were not deleted.

References

{{Reflist

External links

TinyPic Archiveteam
a project by

Archiveteam Archive Team is a group dedicated to digital preservation and web archiving that was co-founded by Jason Scott in 2009. Its primary focus is the copying and preservation of content housed by at-risk online services. Some of its projects include t ...