Twitpic Says It Is Shutting Down; Blames Twitter's Strong-arm Tactics

Twitpic, a third-party Twitter client for uploading photos on Twitter, has announced that it will be shutting down the service starting September 25.

"Twitpic will be shutting down September 25th. You will be able to export all your photos and videos. We'll let everyone know when this feature is live in the next few days," stated Noah Everett, Founder, via a company blog post.

"This is an unexpected and hard announcement for us to make and we want to lay out what led us to this decision," the Everett added.

Everett blamed Twitter for the shutdown of the service. Notably, Twitpic filed its trademark in 2009. However, the service was contacted by Twitter when the trademark came under "published for opposition" phase. Everett said Twitter had threatened Twitpic it would be "denied access to [the Twitter] API," if it does not back off their mark.

Twitpic's Everett also mentioned that he does not have enough resources to tackle the famous micro-blogging website, resulting in the services' shut down.

"Unfortunately we do not have the resources to fend off a large company like Twitter to maintain our mark which we believe wholeheartedly is rightfully ours. Therefore, we have decided to shut down Twitpic," Everett added.

On a related note, Twitter last month reportedly tested a new feature inside the settings menu of the app, called 'Payment & shipping'. While the feature was de-activated after a short while and could not be opened, it leads to speculation that Twitter might allow users to check for payment and shipping details of the products they ordered directly from the 140-character micro-blogging platform.