TwitPic was a

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...

and app that allowed users to post pictures to the

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

microblogging Microblogging is a form of social network that permits only short posts. They "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links",. Retrieved June 5, 2014 which may be the major reason for ...

service, which at the time of TwitPic's creation could not be posted to Twitter directly. TwitPic was often used by

citizen journalist Citizen journalism, also known as collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism or street journalism, is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, a ...

s to upload and distribute pictures in near real-time as an event was taking place.

History

TwitPic was launched in 2008 by Noah Everett. In an interview with Mixergy, Everett revealed that he had been offered a price in the range of 10 million US dollars for his company but he declined the offer. In 2011, Everett launched

Heello Heello was an online social networking service and microblogging service launched in August 2011, and owned and operated by Heello Inc. Heello enabled its users to send and read text-based posts and to share pictures and videos. Heello was found ...

, a service that also supports text posts and videos but is less dependent on

. TwitPic's first app was released on 7 May 2012. Starting mid-2011, Twitter users could upload Photos directly on Twitter itself, reducing the need to use services like TwitPic. On September 4, 2014, TwitPic announced that it would shut down on September 25, 2014, following rapidly declining usage and

trademark infringement Trademark infringement is a violation of the exclusive rights attached to a trademark without the authorization of the trademark owner or any licensees (provided that such authorization was within the scope of the licence). Infringement may o ...

threats by Twitter (who threatened to revoke access to the service's

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

s if they did not withdraw their filings to trademark "Twitpic"). However, shortly afterward on September 18, 2014, TwitPic announced that it would not shut down, as it had been acquired by an unspecified company. However, the following month, TwitPic announced that the deal had fallen through, and that they would shut down on October 25, 2014. On October 25, 2014, Twitpic announced that they had reached an agreement with Twitter to give them the TwitPic domain and photo archive.

Description

TwitPic could be used independently of Twitter as an image hosting website similar to

Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and professional ...

. However, several characteristics made this site a companion for Twitter: * TwitPic uses usernames and passwords from Twitter * Comments to photographs are sent as reply tweets * TwitPic URLs are already short, making it unnecessary to use

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 ...

Anyone with a Twitter account was eligible to post pictures on the site. , TwitPic altered their terms of use, allowing them to distribute the photographs people have uploaded to their "Affiliates". However, TwitPic refused to state who these affiliates may be and what they gain by distributing the pictures. This triggered a public inquiry by users over the possibility of TwitPic publishing user content without compensation. As a result, people began boycotting TwitPic and removing all of their images. TwitPic addressed these concerns in a blog post, claiming that the changes in the terms had been misinterpreted.

Related applications

TweetDeck TweetDeck is a social media dashboard application for management of Twitter accounts. Originally an independent app, TweetDeck was subsequently acquired by Twitter Inc. and integrated into Twitter's interface. It has long ranked as one of the most ...

, Echofon,

Tweetie Tweetie was a client for the social networking website Twitter. There is a mobile version that runs on iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, and a desktop version runs on Mac OS X Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion (respectively 10.5, 10.6 and 10.7). Both t ...

, Twitfile, and

Twitterrific Twitterrific is a macOS and iOS client for the social networking site Twitter created by The Iconfactory and was the first Twitter desktop client to come to macOS. It lets users view "tweets" or micro-blog posts on the Twitter website in real t ...

are iPhone applications that could upload photos to TwitPic. ÜberTwitter, OpenBeak and Twitter for BlackBerry are

BlackBerry The blackberry is an edible fruit produced by many species in the genus ''Rubus'' in the family Rosaceae, hybrids among these species within the subgenus ''Rubus'', and hybrids between the subgenera ''Rubus'' and ''Idaeobatus''. The taxonomy of ...

applications that had the capability of uploading images to TwitPic.

WebOS webOS, also known as LG webOS and previously known as Open webOS, HP webOS and Palm webOS, is a Linux kernel-based multitasking operating system for smart devices such as smart TVs that has also been used as a mobile operating system. Initially ...

phones could upload images to TwitPic using the Tweed application. Android phones could upload pictures to TwitPic with the Twidroid and

Seesmic Seesmic was a suite of freeware web, mobile, and desktop applications which allowed users to simultaneously manage user accounts for multiple social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. Launched in 2008 by French entrepreneur Loïc Le Meur, ...

applications.

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design la ...

devices could upload pictures to TwitPic with the TouchTwit application. All

INQ Inq was a social software and app manufacturer who launched two successful software products and a series of award-winning handsets. Material, Inq's personalised magazine, became the top free news app in the UK App Store and achieved a number 4 ...

mobile phones had the capability of uploading a picture immediately after it was taken due to the

social networking A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

nature of the phone. Both the official Twitter for Android and Twitter for iPhone applications featured TwitPic as an option for sending pictures to Twitter. (

Yfrog yfrog is a defunct image hosting service formerly run by ImageShack. It was designed primarily to allow users to share their photographs and videos as links on the Twitter microblogging platform. History and features Yfrog was launched in Februa ...

was another popular picture-sending option offered by both applications.) According to a report by

Sysomos Sysomos Inc. is a Toronto-based social media analytics company owned by Outside Insight market leaders Meltwater. History Sysomos was founded by Nilesh Bansal and Nick Koudas. The company is a spinoff of the University of Toronto research pro ...

, , TwitPic was the leading third-party image hosting service for Twitter. Of the nearly 2.25 million daily image shares on Twitter, 45.7% of them came from TwitPic. Twitter announced partnership with Photobucket to be the default photo sharing application on 1 June 2011, with the potential to significantly affect TwitPic's market share.How TwitPic is bringing in over $1.5 mil a year from simple Twitter app

In media

In January 2009,

US Airways Flight 1549 US Airways Flight 1549 was a regularly scheduled US Airways flight from New York City (LaGuardia Airport), to Charlotte, North Carolina, Charlotte and Seattle, in the United States. On January 15, 2009, the Airbus A320 serving the flight bir ...

experienced multiple

bird strike A bird strike—sometimes called birdstrike, bird ingestion (for an engine), bird hit, or bird aircraft strike hazard (BASH)—is a collision between an airborne animal (usually a bird or bat) and a moving vehicle, usually an aircraft. The term ...

s and had to be

ditched In aviation, a water landing is, in the broadest sense, an Landing, aircraft landing on a body of water. Seaplanes, such as floatplanes and flying boats, land on water as a normal operation. Ditching is a controlled emergency landing on the ...

in the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

after takeoff from

LaGuardia Airport LaGuardia Airport is a civil airport in East Elmhurst, Queens, New York City. Covering , the facility was established in 1929 and began operating as a public airport in 1939. It is named after former New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia. ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Janis Krums, a passenger on one of the ferries who rushed to help, took a picture of the downed plane as passengers were still evacuating, and tweeted it via TwitPic before traditional media arrived at the scene. The TwitPic service crashed as thousands of people tried to access the photo at the same time. TwitPic also crashed on April 1, 2009, as a result of the large number of photos (and people viewing these photos) being posted from the G20 protests in London.

References

External links