The rollercoaster ride that is the survival of the once-king of Twitter photo hosting appears to be over. It looks like Twitpic will be shutting down after all.
Back in early September, Twitpic announced that it would be shutting down, blaming Twitter and a trademark dispute for the abrupt move.
“Unfortunately we do not have the resources to fend off a large company like Twitter to maintain our mark which we believe whole heartedly is rightfully ours. Therefore, we have decided to shut down Twitpic,” said the company.
A couple weeks later, Twitpic reversed course and announced that it had found a buyer, and wouldn’t be shutting down after all.
Apparently, that fell through.
“It’s with a heavy heart that I announce again that Twitpic will be shutting down on October 25th. We worked through a handful of potential acquirers and exhausted all potential options. We were almost certain we had found a new home for Twitpic (hence our previous tweet), but agreeable terms could not be met. Normally we wouldn’t announce something like that prematurely but we were hoping to let our users know as soon as possible that Twitpic was living on,” says founder Noah Everett in a blog post.
It's with a heavy heart that we re-announce that Twitpic will be shutting down again. More details on our blog http://t.co/LCH7ZTQJHe
— TwitPic (@TwitPic) October 16, 2014
The service will be laid to rest on October 25, which means you have just over a week to export all of your photos. You can do that here, but be warned that it might not work right now. It seems that high demand has made things difficult. I guess you’ll need to keep trying.
“I’m sincerely sorry (and embarrassed) for the circumstances leading up to this, from our initial shutdown announcement to an acquisition false alarm,” says Everett.
Twitpic users no doubt feel pretty jerked around at this point.
Image via Twitpic, Twitter