TwitPic

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Revision as of 14:46, 8 September 2014 by Bzc6p (talk | contribs) (→‎How can I help?: invitation to IRC)
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TwitPic
TwitPic logo
TwitPic mainpage in 2011-01-12
TwitPic mainpage in 2011-01-12
URL http://twitpic.com
Status Closing
Archiving status In progress...
Archiving type Unknown
Project source twitpic-discovery, twitpic-grab, twitpic-items
Project tracker twitpicdisco, twitpic
IRC channel #quitpic (on hackint)

TwitPic is an image hosting service. The service is designed mainly for Twitter users - the images uploaded on the service are given short URLs for usage in Twitter posts. Twitter carries a 140-character post limit, the average Twitpic URL is 25/26 characters long.

On September 4, 2014 TwitPic announced they were shutting down on September 25.

Shutdown

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Noah Everett on blog.twitpic.com:

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.

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

A few weeks ago Twitter contacted our legal demanding that we abandon our trademark application or risk losing access to their API. This came as a shock to us since Twitpic has been around since early 2008, and our trademark application has been in the USPTO since 2009.

Here is some backstory on the history of our trademark:

We originally filed for our trademark in 2009 and our first use in commerce dates back to February 2008 when we launched. We encountered several hurdles and difficulties in getting our trademark approved even though our first use in commerce predated other applications, but we worked through each challenge and in fact had just recently finished the last one. During the “published for opposition” phase of the trademark is when Twitter reached out to our counsel and implied we could be denied access to their API if we did not give up our mark.

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.

On a personal note I (@noaheverett) want to thank you for letting us be a part of your life and helping you share your experiences over the past 6 years, it’s truly been an honor. I have learned so much through running Twitpic over the years. Through the many mistakes I’ve made and lessons learned, to the bad days and the great days. Thank you again everyone…I will miss and cherish the days of Twitpic we had together.

Site structure

Image page urls:

http://twitpic.com/****** http://twitpic.com/***** http://twitpic.com/**** http://twitpic.com/*** http://twitpic.com/** http://twitpic.com/* where * = 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z

where ****** consists of up to 6 alphanumeric characters. Leading zeros are irrelevant, e.g.: /000joe = /0joe = /joe. Like incremental numbers in base-36 numeral system.

Progress

Right now content discovery is in progress, which will be followed by the actual grabbing process.

How can I help?

You can either start up a Warrior (and select TwitPic Phase 1, or rather ArchiveTeam's Choice), or run the scripts manually (see Project source above in the box).

Please note that one discovery item contains 1.000 urls and so takes some time to finish (although items are very little in size). Additionally, twitpic.com seems to have relatively low throughput capacity, thus rate limiting is active to prevent overloading.

You should also join the dedicated IRC channel #quitpic, to catch the latest news about the project and its status, and there you can also put your questions left unanswered after studying this wiki (or the script instructions). You can use the web interface at http://chat.efnet.org:9090, or, if you prefer your favourite IRC client, then your destination is irc://irc.efnet.org/quitpic.

Archives

Coming soon.

Downloaders

  • Downloader by tag (it saves the full resolution image and metadata: uploader, date and description)

External links