Twitpic blinked in the wake of an impending lawsuit with Twitter. No, Twitpic did not even get dragged into court by Twitter. Twitpic will be closing their doors (and service) on September 25th. They took their ball away and left.
Apparently, Twitter served Twitpic legal documents few weeks ago. Twitter was insisting that Twitpic drop their application for a trademark or else. The “or else” meant that Twitpic would not have access to Twitter’s Application Programming Interface. Basically, if Twitpic went forward with obtaining a trademark, and gain all of the benefits of having one, they would not have access to post pictures seemlessly to Twitter (like you can do with Instagram to Facebook. But Facebook owns Instagram. I digress).
Twitter’s brand policy is pretty far reaching. The policy states third-party applications, websites and other products should not “apply for a trademark with a name including ‘Twitter’, ‘Tweet’, the Twitter bird…” It will be interesting to see what happens with companies like TweetDeck, Twibs and TwitStamp.
So, what do we do without Twitpic? Luckily, Twitter already rolled out it own service in 2011. How nice of them.
Gayle Seletsky Greene 